


The Truth About Cats and Dogs

by Guede



Series: Cats and Dogs [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Cock Warming, Dom/sub Undertones, Full Shift Werewolves, Humor, Intercrural Sex, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, M/M, Overstimulation, Rimming, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Tails, Werecats, Werewolf Biology, Werewolf Culture, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 19:55:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7727749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott’s a werewolf, Stiles is a werecat, and they’ve always gotten along perfectly fine.</p><p>Derek doesn’t get this at all.  </p><p>(Peter does, but he’s dealing with Stiles, which is different from dealing with a werecat, and Chris just wishes he didn’t have to deal, period.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Scott,” Stiles calls. “Scott, there’s a wolf in the living room.”

Mornings aren’t really Scott’s time of day. He’s tried a whole bunch of different tricks and approaches, but no matter what he does, his brain just takes a while to get going. “Mpmph,” he groans into his pillow, telling his arms to push himself out.

His arms just flail at the sheets. In the other room, Stiles walks around in a semicircle, snapping his fingers, and then comes over to stand in the doorway of Scott’s bedroom. “Actually, I probably should give you more detail than that. Specifically, he’s male, and I know that because he is _really_ hanging it out there, and I’m going to assume that those are his jeans and shirt draped over our kitchen counter?”

Scott gives up on pushing himself up, and just works on flopping till his head is hanging off the bed. That way the mattress isn’t blocking his mouth, and he can talk. “What?”

“I said—” Stiles pauses and the stranger’s heartbeat briefly speeds up, then drops back to its peaceful slow thud “—oh, _okay_ , then, he’s decided to shift out and damn, Scott. The girls can’t ever call you lame again, if you’re gonna bring in that caliber of rando.”

“What?” Scott says, finally getting his arms under himself. He also gets a foot there, which is bad because the foot isn’t really coordinated with the edge of the bed and while he wanted to get off that, he also doesn’t want to basically kick himself head-first into the floor. “What, no, we didn’t—he’s not—”

Thankfully, alpha reflexes save him from that. They also save him from then pile-driving his head into the wall. They don’t exactly keep him from forgetting to not windmill his hands with his claws out, but his roommate and best buddy has that covered.

“Okay, whatever you say, Scotty,” Stiles says, deeply amused, from his new perch atop Scott’s bedroom door. He shifts up to cross his arms over the top edge of it, letting one leg dangle down and somehow looking comfortable like that as Scott mumbles apologies and searches out clothing at the same time. “I’m just saying. Naked werewolf dude, on our living room floor.”

“I didn’t pick him up, I just walked him home from the bar.” Scott yanks on a shirt and pants, glances at himself in his mirror and scruffs one hand through his hair. Then he looks up at Stiles, who is smirking so hard he’s in danger of twitching off the door. “Not like—I was doing my safe-walk patrol, you know that, and he looked like he’d had a little too much, and when I asked he wouldn’t tell me who I could call.”

From the living room comes a muffled grunt, and then a brief scuffle, sounding like maybe the guy rolled over and got tangled in some furniture. But then it’s quiet again.

“Well, so why didn’t you just walk him to the student clinic?” Stiles says. He lets Scott go out of the bedroom first, but then twists into a leap that lands him slightly ahead. Then he turns back to face Scott. “Or—oh, wait, it’s rush week, right? Guessing all the beds were full?”

“Yeah, and anyway, he was getting really…he was kind of…uncooperative, and since I didn’t know what his status was, I didn’t want to just call up the were hotline,” Scott says, going around the couch. “You know they can get really judgmental about people with nontraditional pac—gah. Uh.”

“So I mentioned he was naked?” Stiles says, grinning, while Scott averts his eyes and lunges for the couch blanket and yanks it over the man. “Was that the thank-you for the sleepover?”

Scott just…is not even close to ready to deal with this yet. He doesn’t like taking the easy way out, but honestly, his head hurts and on top of that he’s got so much blood rushing to his face that his cheeks actually are tingling, and he just stares at Stiles for a few seconds.

“Oh, my God, turn off the puppy eyes, okay, fine, I’ll go get the water and the painkillers, you go wake Sleeping Beauty here in a non-sexually-harassing way,” Stiles says, shaking his head and walking into the kitchen. “Did you get a name, by the way?”

“Umm, I think…right, Derek, he’s Derek,” Scott says, just as Derek rolls over, opens his eyes, and then slaps an arm over them. “Oh, hi! Good morning!”

Derek just lies there, not moving. His heartbeat says he’s awake, and his scent says that he’s angry but not about to throw up or anything like that, so…time stretches on and he still doesn’t move, and Scott starts to get worried. So he bends down to check and suddenly Derek jerks his arm off his face and snarls.

Scott doesn’t snarl back, he’s got better manners than that, but he can’t keep his eyes from reddening. Which makes Derek twitch his chin slightly upwards before Derek gets hold of himself, squints at Scott, and then groans and covers his face with his hand. “Shit. I didn’t make you up?”

“Uh, no, I’m real,” Scott says. He straightens up, rubbing at the side of his face, and then bends down again to offer Derek his hand. “I’m not sure what you remember, but I’m—”

“The asshole who got in the way when I was going to kick those two guys’ asses for talking shit about my sister,” Derek mutters. He pinches his nose, then sighs and takes his hand away, and sits up on his own.

“Scott,” Scott mutters. He pauses, then reminds himself hangovers suck for everyone. “I’m Scott, and I’m sure that your sister wouldn’t have wanted you to end up in jail for the night.”

“Obviously you’ve never met Cora.” Derek glances down at his legs, cocks his head. His brows twitch together, and then he shoots Scott a dirty look while shoving the blanket off of himself. “Where the hell are my clothes?”

“Chill, dude,” Stiles says, wandering back from the kitchen. He’s concentrating on the phone in his hands. “Now, admittedly, that’s a reasonable question, but you still have all your organs and we’re actually hanging around to talk to you, so I think it’s pretty clear you’re not in an urban legend.”

Derek stares at Stiles for a second. Then he shakes his head. “I’m a werewolf, I’d regrow any organ you stole and I wouldn’t have the surgery scar either.”

Stiles looks up from the phone. “That…is a very, very weird, yet fascinating response for you to have. It also sheds a lot of light on why your emergency contact’s so interested in what kind of eyewitness and tape evidence might be around about your night out.”

“My—wait, did you call Peter?” Derek demands, surging up to his feet. “Why would you call him? He’s not my emergency contact!”

Scott automatically jerks in front of his friend, and then nearly jerks back out of the way. Not because he regrets trying to protect Stiles, even if it’s not necessary and Stiles is giving him that _look_ , all, Scott, I can deal with the attempted murder charge so stop blocking my lunge, but because Derek is still naked and Scott is trying to be polite about it and damn it, but Stiles is right and there’s no way to _not_ look unless Scott just completely turns around.

Which he does. For other reasons. “Stiles, did you break into his phone?” Scott asks.

“What?” Stiles says defensively, sort of stuffing the phone under one arm. “Hey, I wake up and walk out and okay, c’mon, I know you, I know it wasn’t a hook-up so I was just trying to get a head start on getting him home so he can go defile his own carpet. And I open up his contacts and first thing, it’s right there, big and bold, ‘Call for problems.’”

“That means I only call him if I _want_ to ruin my life!” Derek snaps.

“Also, I didn’t call him, I just texted,” Stiles says, peeping around Scott. “And texted. And texted. He’s really chatty, this Peter. Lot of quotes too, wouldn’t have pegged you for somebody who’d go for a Monty Python fan.”

Scott’s busy trying to get the phone away from Stiles, who keeps passing it behind his back and tossing it from hand to hand and just generally being kind of annoying about keep-away, but he can hear and smell Derek’s ire rising. “Stiles, maybe you should—”

“He’s my _uncle_ ,” Derek hisses. “Not my—”

“Stiles, just give that to me,” Scott says, giving up on being nice and slapping the phone out of Stiles’ hand. Then he grabs it before it hits the floor, and spins around so he can try and grab Derek when the other man charges. “Okay, look, both of you, it’s morning, I think we all just want to go our separate ways now, so can we just—just not make a mess?”

The doorbell rings.

Derek goes from flared nostrils, blazing blue eyes, and anger-swelled neck muscles to a sudden look of dread. “Damn it, that’s _Peter_ ,” he says, cocking his head. “You told him where to find me?”

“Whatever, guy who doesn’t know where his own clothes are,” Stiles says. Just as suddenly as Derek’s lost his anger, Stiles has lost interest and he flaps a dismissive hand at Derek and strolls across the room, heading back towards the bathroom. “Scott’s right, way too early for this throwback farce stuff. I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet.”

[People always ask Scott how he and Stiles manage to get along. Which is fundamentally speciesist, and you’d think by now everybody would know to not even start there, but…Scott sighs and tells himself that people are more willing to learn when you teach and don’t just force them, and then he says that he might be a werewolf and Stiles a werecat, but they’re both people. They both do people things, like every morning they both get up and floss and stuff like that. So it’s really not that big a deal.]

“Please don’t try and attack him,” Scott says. “I know Stiles is Stiles, but he’s my friend and—and just don’t.”

Derek looks at him, then at Stiles. A little irritation comes back into his face, but then the doorbell rings again and he winces. He glances around the room, then grabs up the blanket again and slings it around his waist. Then, for some reason, he takes a couple steps towards the window.

Scott had been getting the front door, but he pauses with that half-opened and looks back at Derek. “What are you—”

“Why are you letting him in?” Derek hisses, eyes wide and wild.

“So you don’t crawl down the fire escape naked again and cause us all to be flooded with posts of your indecent bits on some campus walk-of-shame Instagram feed,” comes a sigh from the other side of the door. Then the door’s nudged a few more inches open, and a man sticks his head around it. “And would you happen to be Stiles?”

Scott…doesn’t really like how the man is smiling at him. He can’t really pinpoint why, it’s just one of those weird instinctive things that always end up being right in ways that get him and Stiles involved in shutting down huge criminal operations. “No, I’m not, I’m Scott.”

The man blinks, and then looks both disappointed and relieved. “Oh. Well, I’m Peter, Derek’s uncle, and—”

Peter and Derek suddenly grab at their ears and jerk down towards the ground, faces screwing up in pain. Derek goes so far down that he loses his grip on the blanket, while Peter stumbles into the door and half-falls into the apartment. Both of them whimper a little.

“What…what the hell…what was _that_?” Derek mumbles into the silence following the scream.

Scott’s an alpha, and also he’s heard that scream a lot. Which doesn’t really mean he’s any more used to how bleeding-eardrum awful it is, so much as he knows what comes after it and so he’s motivated to power through it.

He dives across the room, scoops up the blanket and throws it around Derek, and uses it like a slingshot to send Derek flying towards the front door. It—almost works. Derek gets to the door, but then he has to catch himself to keep from stepping on his uncle, and that means he catches himself enough to turn towards Scott, an outraged and confused look on his face. “What the hell are you do—” he starts.

“You _asshole_!” Stiles shouts. He’s not quite hitting as high of a note as with his scream, but he’s high enough to make Derek wince again. He stalks back into the room, eyes glowing, claws and fangs out, long, furry tail lashing like a bullwhip behind him. “What the hell is wrong with you, do you just think you can, you can fucking waltz in here, oh, sure, I’m a big bad wolf, I fucking own this town, look at me with my canine swagger, and just, literally, fucking piss over everything? Do you? Do you?”

Scott looks at Derek, a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Did you use the sandbox?”

“The what?” Derek says. “What, you have it right by the toilet, I tripped over it when I was trying to aim—”

“ _Well you can’t do that_!” Stiles roars. Behind him, the windows rattle.

[Cohabiting really isn’t that hard. You just need to keep a couple simple ideas in mind. For example, completely ignoring differences can be just as insensitive as using them to put down a group of people. So werewolves and werecats are both territorial, but they go about it in very different ways, and Scott and Stiles respect that about each other. Stiles keeps his scratching to a post in his bedroom, and Scott uses the toilet even when he’s full-shifted. Simple.]

Scott grabs whatever parts of Derek and Peter he can reach, and gets them into the hall just as the door slams after them. Slams and bends, the wood groaning and popping even with preservation and strength spells layered on it, before slowly, slowly, shuddering straight again.

“He takes that really, really seriously,” Derek mutters from where he’s slumped against the opposite wall. “You put up with that a lot?”

“No, because I’m not a—” Scott just bites down before he calls Derek a name. He pulls himself up from the floor, twisting his foot out from under Peter, and listens for a second.

Stiles is stalking around in the living room, occasionally smacking things. The smack sounds like he probably already grabbed their pack of wet wipes. He’s muttering under his breath about pissing contest jerkasses and presumptuous scent-marking, and at that point Scott stops listening and sighs and checks whether he has his phone and wallet.

He does. Thankfully, he forgot to take those out of his pants last night and then he managed to put that pair of pants on this morning. “Look, we’d just better let him clean and calm down some,” he says. “I think I’m going to get a coffee downstairs.”

“You’re getting a coffee.” Derek looks at him as if Scott is brain-damaged. “And—and what, I have to sit here till he’s gotten over it? My clothes are in there! My phone is in there!”

Scott frowns and then realizes that yeah, Derek’s right, Scott doesn’t have the man’s phone anymore. He must have dropped it when he was grabbing Derek and Peter. “Stiles usually opens the door after fifteen to twenty minutes. He just wants to get the smell out before he talks to anybody.”

“Oh, _that’s_ Stiles,” Peter pipes up.

“Um, yeah, that’s my roommate,” Scott says, glancing at him. Peter at least seems to be taking it well, he thinks, and he can’t quite completely squash the irritation that flares up when he gets up and Derek actually, honest-to-God growls at him. “Look, okay, it’s not your place and I was just trying to keep you out of trouble last night and Stiles was trying to get somebody to come get you, and maybe it’s not what you wanted, but you shouldn’t be this much of a jerk about it. So yes, I’m getting a coffee, and if you don’t want to get shredded, you’ll just get one too and wait for Stiles to work it out.”

Then Scott…goes to their building’s first floor, where there’s a coffeeshop that makes pretty good pastries, and he orders himself an iced coffee and a raspberry scone. “Need anything for Stiles?” asks the barista, who’s already casting a knowing, if sympathetic eye, over Scott’s rumpled clothes.

“No, I’m just gonna—he’ll be—no, thanks, that’s okay,” Scott mumbles, taking away his coffee and food. 

It’s still early enough so that the shop is mostly empty, so he just gets himself a corner and sits down. Takes out his phone, texts Stiles that he’s really sorry, and then settles in to wait. With any luck, he’ll at least wake up all the way and stop missing things like a soiled sandbox.

Scott’s phone pings and he nearly chokes on a mouthful of scone trying to answer it. He puts his hand over his mouth to keep in the food, then has to jerk his knee out and bounce his phone back into the air to stop it from hitting the floor, and then grabs the phone and puts down his scone and just wonders if the upgrade in reflexes from turning alpha is really worth it.

“Was that Stiles?” says…Derek, who’s appeared in front of his table.

“Um,” Scott says, because he’s looking up instead of at his phone. Mostly because Derek’s still not dressed, aside from the blanket he’s borrowing and which he really should be holding higher than he is, if only so the barista will stop foaming milk all over the counter. “Oh, yeah, it is.”

Derek looks impatiently at Scott, and when Scott doesn’t do whatever Derek is waiting for, Derek rolls his eyes. “Can we go back yet?”

Scott thumbs in his passcode and checks the message, then shakes his head. He starts to put his phone away, but a shadow crosses it and he looks up, frowning, to find Derek leaning over him. “Did you…want something?”

“My phone, my clothes, and my…never mind,” Derek mumbles. He glances off to the side, looking oddly uncomfortable, since he’s still standing so close the blanket’s hem is lapping over Scott’s feet. “So, did he say how long?”

He was trying to read Scott’s phone, Scott belatedly realizes. So Scott takes his phone out again and unlocks it and holds it so Derek can see it.

Derek turns back to look at it, bobs his head in an irritable way, and then narrows his eyes. Behind him, a mixed group of sleepy-looking geomantic engineering students, juggling textbooks and divining rods, comes in and promptly creates a pile-up against the pastry case as their heads swivel towards Scott’s corner.

“It’s nothing but angry cat faces,” Derek says. Then he looks down. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to keep somebody from breaking a leg and look, just sit down,” Scott mutters, going from trying to hike the blanket up Derek’s waist to just using it to drag him into the booth. “And yeah, okay, Stiles gets nonverbal when he’s really, really mad and when he actually starts using words again, we can go up, all right? And I don’t know when exactly that will be and—and wait, your uncle’s here, isn’t he? So if you want, you can just give me your address and when I can get in again, I’ll get your stuff and—”

“Peter already left,” Derek says.

Scott blinks a few times. Then he sniffs, but nope, they didn’t give him decaf by accident. “He…left? But…”

“Because that’s why I don’t _call_ him when I have a problem,” Derek mutters. He glances aside again, running his hand back through his hair. He’s suddenly smelling—well, about as awkward anybody in public with no clothes would be, except he’s made it pretty clear that’s not so big of an issue for him. But now he’s grimacing and hunching his shoulders and avoiding Scott’s eyes. “Listen, I really didn’t know what that sandbox was for.”

“Well…okay, but it’s not my sandbox anyway,” Scott says slowly. “You should really have that discussion with Stiles.”

“I know, but there’s this other—I have to talk to him or else Peter will—you don’t want to see Peter again, trust me,” Derek says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look. Peter wants me to talk to your roommate.”

“Okay,” Scott says. He picks up his coffee, then has a thought and sniffs again…but nope, they gave him the were brew, he should be getting that caffeine hit at some point. “But, um, if that’s the only reason you’re going to apologize, I don’t know that that’s a good idea. Stiles is pretty good at telling when somebody doesn’t mean it and he—”

Derek’s head comes up and he stares at Scott as if Scott’s gotten stuck halfway through shift. He shakes himself, stares again, and then slaps his hand over his face. “Peter doesn’t _care_ whether Stiles is okay with me or not, all right? He just cares about Stiles.”

“Oh, they know each other?” Scott says, surprised. Granted, he doesn’t know everybody that Stiles knows, he’s not a creep like that, but he is Stiles’ best friend and Stiles usually does keep him updated on all the werewolves, because pack politics and—

“What? No, are you stu—look, my uncle wants to bang your roommate, and he’s blackmailing me into staying here till I get Stiles’ number,” Derek spits out.

Scott, thankfully, had not yet started drinking his coffee. He puts that safely on the table. “Oh. Well…um, let me just ask Stiles if that’s okay.”

He takes his phone out. Derek is still staring at him, but about halfway into his typing, Derek’s eyes grudgingly drop to the phone. “I thought you said Stiles was mad,” Derek says.

“Yeah, he is, so he’s probably got his phone on silent but he’ll read it when he’s feeling better,” Scott says.

Derek opens and closes his mouth, and then makes an odd jerking motion, like he’s going to climb onto the table or something like that. Scott only sees it in his peripheral vision but he reacts instinctively, spreading his shoulders and rumbling in his throat. Then he looks up to find Derek sinking stiffly back, irritated expression not quite matching the flush in Derek’s face. “You’re—you’re just _asking_ him?”

“Well, yeah, why wouldn’t I?” Scott frowns. “I mean, what did you think we were—oh, wait, he’s texting. Oh, hey, he’s coming down.”

“Why would we even tell him?” Derek demands, more loudly. This time he gets up enough to slap his palm against the table.

Scott can tell just from how Derek stutters that his eyes have gone red. Then Derek drops back into his seat. He fluffs his hand through his hair, then glances back at Scott. Twitches a little, like he’s surprised that Scott is still alpha-ing him, before slouching down like he’s looking at his hands just because he feels like it. Even though he very clearly smells embarrassed.

Well, Scott might be a little annoyed, but he doesn’t want to pick a fight, so he and Derek just sit there till Stiles swings up to the table, tail still out and whipping occasionally behind him. Stiles is irritated but he’s calmed down enough to take them in, raise his brows, and then hop into the booth, his arm around Scott’s neck, both legs thrown over Scott’s lap. “Hey, hey, equal-opportunity jackass, are we?”

Derek flicks his eyes back and forth between Scott and Stiles. He’s still scowling, but he’s starting to smell just a little bit panicky, along with the embarrassment. “Are you two—”

“No, oh, my God, forget the jackass and just learn some cross-were body language, would you?” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. He pulls his legs off Scott but keeps himself tilted onto Scott’s shoulder, probably so he doesn’t have to sit on his tail. Which is swishing around near Derek’ legs, judging from how Derek’s shifting in his seat. “I’m not holding out for sensitivity, but you could at least figure out standard greetings versus on the prowl.”

Derek blinks hard.

“I’m the werecat, I’m allowed to use coded language like that,” Stiles says. He’s already losing interest and has moved on to polishing off the remaining corner of Scott’s scone. “Okay, drunk jerk, I am still not happy about your drunk jerkitude, but at least you kept it all in the box and I’ll just have to replace the sand, as opposed to the whole bathroom. So—”

As understanding as Scott tries to be, even he can’t put up with everything, and at this point he is actually alpha-ing somebody to stay in their seat. He doesn’t even have to do that when he’s volunteering to work with were grade-schoolers, and he just—he does not want to end up prying Stiles’ claws out of Derek’s jugular in the middle of the café, while everybody else tries to look at Derek naked. So yeah, he talks over Derek’s snarl. “His uncle wants to date you.”

“What, this Peter guy?” Stiles says, while Derek chokes a little and shoots Scott a weirdly betrayed look. Stiles frowns for a couple seconds, then shifts up as his tail disappears. “Huh. Well, okay, I was in a massive rage at the time, but he looked kind of hot. You got pics?”

Derek shifts his betrayed look to Stiles, without removing the betrayal. “Are you kidding me?”

“C’mon, obviously you don’t want to be here talking about this, you’re not doing it out of the goodness of your heart, you’re just here ‘cause he’s making you,” Stiles says. He pauses. “Funny, I thought he was a beta too.”

“He is a beta,” Derek spits out, still looking incredulous. “But what—”

“Well, okay, whatever, I don’t need the deets on your intra-pack strong-arming to figure out what to do on Friday night,” Stiles says, pulling out something. Then he twists around so Scott can’t see what he has, and also bats his hand around in the space over the table. “Lemme just see, shut it, I wanna see, I’ll give you your phone back after…oh, _hey_. So is the shirtless bloody deer hunt thing a staged thing, or is that his usual weekend?”

Derek actually hasn’t reached for his phone. In fact, he looks like horror has him glued firmly in place. “What are you doing?” he finally says. “Did you—my phone—”

“Relax, it still works, I’m just taking advantage of how you don’t wipe your screen down, especially after putting your fingers in highly-visible and long-lasting sticky fluids,” Stiles says, tossing the phone across the table. Then he leans back, grinning. “But like I said, don’t need to know about you. Just gonna get you off the hook with your uncle, no, no, no thanks necessary. Just—”

Stiles leans over the table, his grin going from wide to unhinged, as in he’s shifted just enough so that the size and number of his teeth create an optical illusion where they seem to extend past his jaw hinge.

“—maybe, you know, _never use our bathroom again_ ,” he finishes. He pauses while his face shifts fully human, and then bounces up. “Gimme a few to air out the deodorant spray, Scotty, ‘kay?”

“Sure,” Scott says, waving as Stiles wanders back out of the shop.

He and Derek sit still for a couple minutes. Scott finishes his coffee, wipes up the crumbs Stiles left on the table, and then gets up.

“If you want to just wait here, I’ll bring your stuff down,” he says to Derek.

Who starts, still looking at where Scott had been sitting, and then abruptly turns to look at where Scott now is. “He’s just—going to hook up with Peter?”

“Yeah,” Scott sighs. “Yeah, he does that sometimes. He probably already got Peter’s number off your phone, too, so I don’t think you have to do anything now.”

“I’m…not sure this is a good thing,” Derek finally mutters. 

But he’s not moving or anything, so eventually Scott shrugs and walks away from the table. Scott drops off his trash and go gets Derek’s things, which Stiles has shoved into a little pile by the door, and then he goes back downstairs to the café.

“Oh, he called somebody who picked him up,” says the barista, seeing Scott look around. “I know, right? The one time you wish this place _didn’t_ have awesome reception.”

“Right,” Scott mutters, holding the bundle of Derek’s clothes. “Definitely what I was wishing for.”

* * *

Chris and his daughter have just moved to town, and they don’t know a single person aside from their realtor and the contact person for the local were-support center. So yeah, he’s a little nervous when the doorbell rings.

Answering it with a gun in hand is maybe overreacting, but one, that happened to be the box he’d been unpacking, and two…two, just because it’s suburban California in the early afternoon doesn’t mean things can’t go bad. He’s all his daughter has and he needs to be careful, at least for her sake.

“Who is it?” he calls through the door.

“John Stilinski, the sheriff,” a man calls back, over small scratchy noises. “So normally I’d be rolling out the welcome wagon, but in your case, Mr. Argent, I think we’d better have a talk about what kinds of home-improvement spells this place is and is not zoned for.”

Chris blinks hard, because at the moment he’s torn between being impressed that the guy is actually up on his codes and irritated that he’s actually got to deal with some lousy nitpicker of a local cop who probably considers Halloween toilet-papering to be a crime wave. Then he settles on a grimace and looks around for somewhere to put down the gun. “Oh, all right, just give me a second, I was in the basement and I didn’t—”

The wards on the door suddenly snap apart, stinging Chris’ nose with the acrid odor of ozone, and then a second later, the door swings in a couple inches. It pauses and Stilinski takes a deep, gruff grumble of a breath. He knocks on the door, so it swings in a little further, and then he sticks his head past the edge. “Mr. Argent?” he says doubtfully.

He pauses, frowning, and then ducks back outside. Chris can hear the small clicks and snaps of something on the man’s belt being unholstered, and at that point he finally manages to pry his claws out of the back of the door. Because getting caught out on illegal burglary-prevention spells is one thing, but getting accidentally shot over them on his first _day_ in town…well, he’s not going to be that dumb-hunter urban legend.

However, Chris is going to be the guy who forgets parquet floors and pawpads aren’t really friends. His feet slide out from under him and his hands go up and his ass hits and then the back of his head, and—and he yanks down the gun, then swears as all the bangs catch up with him. Then forces his head back up. “ _Shit_ , I’m sorry, I wasn’t threatening you, I just—I was unpacking—”

On the one hand, John Stilinski isn’t pointing a gun back, or looking like he’s going to point a gun at Chris any time soon. He does have his radio in hand, but he slides that back into his belt as he steps fully into the foyer, a deeply unimpressed look on his face. “I did see you have a full license and all,” he says dryly, nodding at the gun. “Just renewed too, passed the psych quals with flying colors. And the gun safety test. So you know better than to pack loaded firearms, I take it?”

Chris…is both relieved to realize that the man’s right, and annoyed as hell with himself. “Uh, yeah, it’s…see, it’s not,” he says. 

He pushes himself up and snaps open the gun so John can see, and then snaps that shut. Reaches out, watching John, and puts the gun down on the nearest box, as far as he can get it from himself, and then he hauls himself up onto his feet.

“You all right?” John says, looking him up and down.

“What? No, I’m okay. Just slipped on the rug,” Chris mutters.

John looks around them, nodding absently, and Chris remembers they haven’t unrolled the rug yet.

“I mean, slipped because we didn’t get the rug down yet, and anyway, look, the zoning, I know but I need those spells for work and we’re going to put in for a proper variance as soon as I can get down to city hall,” Chris says. “In the meantime, federal law does—”

“Give people holding your kind of license certain defenses that come up if you do anything wrong, not loopholes to get out of local ordinances in the first place,” John says, his eyes snapping back to Chris.

[John is both the sheriff and the town’s highest-ranking werecat, which Chris knows because he is far, far too paranoid to even check into a motel for an emergency stopover without at least trying to search its hostile paranormal activity citations. And Chris isn’t such an old-school type that he hates all the new technology in the field; on the contrary, the less he and his daughter have to expose themselves for routine info-gathering, the better chances they have in the real confrontation. But at the end of the day, technology can only do so much, and a cold list of stats on a computer screen is never going to simulate a face-to-face meeting.

Also, Chris has been a werecat for all of three weeks and John is the first dominant male he’s met since turning, and John has a couple inches and at least ten pounds on him, and fills out that damn cop uniform like somebody took Chris’ passion for enforcement and made it dusty blond and ruggedly, irritably handsome. Chris is only human, and he hasn’t had time to be interested since his wife died four years ago.]

“Mr. Argent?” John sighs.

Chris fights down the urge to flatten his ears and let his tail droop, because those are still human and not capable of doing that and he is _not_ shifting right here, damn it. “Sorry, I…yeah, sorry, what did you say?”

John stares at him for a few seconds. “I pointed out that you were trying to do an end-run around the laws here.”

“Oh,” Chris says. For a were, John is modulating the signals an awful lot, with a retiring stance to go with his raised head, but it’s a warm day and he’s not using a lot of scent maskers, if any, and Chris’ industrial-strength ones only work on him. “I. Look, it’s—my kid and me—”

“All right, here’s what we’ll do,” John says, with a half-sigh that makes Chris want to drop and repeatedly bump his head against John’s shin. “I don’t want to take you in on your first day, and just based on my couple minutes on your porch, all your stuff is passive. So as long as you lay off the active wards, and if you have a break-in, you call _us_ instead of dealing with it, I’ll suspend citations for now. But if you don’t get that variance at least started by the end of the week, I’ll put them in, and I’ll have them backdated to today.”

“Okay,” Chris says. Then he grimaces, because it’s not just him who thinks that sounds too easy, it’s John too, and John is starting to look suspicious again. “Seems fair. We don’t have any hunts on right now, and I wasn’t planning on it till we got settled here. I’ve just got them up just because I have a lot of…of…”

“Things you shouldn’t touch unless you know what you’re doing with them?” John supplies. He looks annoyed at something or somebody besides Chris. “Yeah, believe me, I understand. Kids.”

“Allison’s licensed too,” Chris immediately says. “She’s a good hunter. We both are.”

John’s brows tick upward and Chris regrets coming off so sharp. But John doesn’t comment, just stares at him. Chris does his best to not fidget, wishing like hell that turning into a werecat hadn’t reset all his nerves. 

“All right, well, I was just coming by to introduce myself, and welcome you to the neighborhood,” John finally says. He relaxes enough to offer Chris his hand.

When Chris takes it, because as much as he knows it’ll be bad for his stoneface attempts, he also knows John will notice more if he refuses; he feels a little tingle around his eyes and he knows that his glamour’s going to break if he so much as twitches. And at this distance, there is no way that John is going to miss slitted pupils.

“We try and all get along here,” John goes on, holding tightly onto Chris’ hand. Not squeezing, exactly, just holding with no sign he’s going to let it get away. “It’s a real interesting mix, all types, humans and weres and a bunch of others, and we all try to make sure nobody feels threatened just because somebody isn’t used to them. Which goes for hunters too, though you can get that a hunter makes some people nervous no matter what. But we still try and give _everybody_ a chance.”

Chris grunts. Mostly because if he speaks, he’s afraid it might come out in a purr.

[Social weres, like werewolves and werecats, don’t _have_ to group up. Contrary to all the folklore, it’s generally not a do-or-die situation, and the advantages aren’t strictly biological so much as, well, social. But whatever the basis, being in a group _feels_ good. And John feels good. Him just telling Chris off, that lights up a whole spectrum of unconscious approval in Chris’ hindbrain, aggressive and territorial and unafraid but strong and smart about it and Jesus, Chris really wants to rub his cheek against John right now.]

“Anyway, come on down, get to know the station once you’ve gotten unpacked,” John says, letting go of Chris’ hand. He softens the sudden loss of firm warmth by giving Chris’ arm a pat, but that’s all, that’s it as he moves towards the door. “We’re here to serve the community, that’s my motto.”

“Okay,” Chris manages to get out. “Right. Thanks. Thanks for stopping by.”

John nods, a polite half-smile on his face, and walks out of the house.

“Dad,” Allison says ten minutes later, crouching down to look under the half-assembled couch. She has a bag of groceries next to her. “Dad? Dad?”

“Hey,” Chris says, shaking out of his daze. He sniffs. “You got the chicken?”

“Yeah, and I passed a garden store too, so I bought some stuff to set up the herb garden in the back,” Allison says. She puts her hands on the floor and switches from squatting to sitting, and then gives Chris a curious, worried look. “Dad, are you…are you okay? Did something happen while I was out? Because if we broke anything, it’s really not a big deal, that happens—”

Chris rubs his face. “No, didn’t break anything, just—the sheriff came by to introduce himself and I slipped in front of him.”

Allison winces in sympathy. “I really think we should consider carpeting everything,” she says very seriously. “Or at least tacking down rugs, at least till you get used to things. But I guess the bright side is, that’s really nice of him to come say hi, isn’t it? It looks like here might be as supportive as they say?”

“Yeah, looks like,” Chris says.

His daughter sits with him a little longer, while he tries and fails to come up with a way to tell her he’s sorry he’s being so ridiculous right now. Then she sighs and picks up the groceries. “Well, okay, I’m going to put these away. Dad, I’m—I’m sure it’s fine and he doesn’t care or anything, and he probably didn’t even—”

Chris grimaces. “He saw.”

“Okay…anyway, if you’re more comfortable staying under there for a bit, I just want you to know, I’ll start dinner and then I’m going to be in the backyard, finishing up there,” Allison says. She pauses, then reaches under the couch and awkwardly rubs his shoulder.

“Thanks, Allison,” Chris says. He does his best to smile till she’s out of the room, and then he sighs and lets his face smash into the carpet. As he stays firmly under the couch, because that is currently the only piece of furniture that he can hide under.

[He and Allison are both happy to leave medieval methods in the history books, but if he’s honest, Chris can see why hunters who turned would shoot themselves.]

* * *

“Well, what does that mean?” Peter says.

His nephew stares at him. “He thinks you’re hot,” Derek repeats slowly. “I think it means that he’s coming over and having sex with you, and I need to get far, far away from here before that happens. So, bye.”

Peter sighs and lunges and snags Derek’s elbow, dragging him back. “Oh, no, you don’t. You were in that apartment all night, Derek, you must have gotten more than just he prefers a sandbox. And you owe me, again, for rescuing you from yet another disorderly conduct—”

“How do I owe you?” Derek snarls. “Scott’s the one who kept me from fighting, you just showed up to _blackmail_ me into hooking you up before you’d drive me home—”

“I also showed up to the bar that you two were at, because your alpha savior didn’t bother to check into the affiliation of those two betas, and then I rang up _their_ alpha and now they’re busy groveling at Cora’s feet,” Peter sighs.

Derek considers this. “So Cora owes you.”

[Sometimes Peter wants to hurt his family. He loves them and will rain down terror with a side of public humiliation on anyone who crosses them, he’s got plenty of people in the area who are more than willing to testify to that. But honestly, that’s how any half-competent werewolf should be when it comes to outsiders. Within the pack, on the other hand…he just doesn’t understand how it happened, he thinks is the problem. He and his sister have their disagreements, but they’re both highly intelligent and perceptive people, and surely their genes would dominate any potential defects in their mates. So how Talia managed to pop out three children without _any_ sense whatsoever is beyond him.]

“I mean,” Derek says, shaking himself free and then alternating between eyeing Peter and eyeing the door behind Peter. “I was really, really drunk. I wasn’t exactly scoping things out for anything other than where I could go to sleep.”

“Which is why you happily went home with a strange alpha, and somehow didn’t antagonize him into declaring war on your mother,” Peter says. “Because you just wanted somewhere to sleep.”

“I was _tired_ ,” Derek says defensively. “Besides, you met Scott, you have no idea—he’s just—you know he actually found out where I lived and dropped off my clothes? And…and you’re not letting me out of here till I tell you something, are you.”

Peter pulls out his tablet and opens up a new list. “No. Did you see his bedroom?”

“You mean Stiles, right?” Derek sighs. “No. No, I didn’t. I saw the bathroom and the living room and maybe the kitchen, but again, I was drunk. Look, instead of talking to me, shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, researching what werecats like? Isn’t that why you got a sociology degree, so you could figure out what people wanted?”

“No, that was so I could figure out how to make them want what I want them to want,” Peter says. “I don’t really care what they want, usually.”

Derek stares at him again. “You are such a psycho.”

“But honest!” chirps a voice from Peter’s bookcase.

To his credit, Derek immediately leaps to flank Peter, who’s tossed aside the tablet and jumped over the couch so that that isn’t in the way. Of…Stiles, who is perched on the bookcase, busily paging through one of Peter’s werewolf history books while nibbling one of Talia’s homemade elk jerky strips. What looks like one of Peter’s t-shirts is stuffed under Stiles’ leg, and when Stiles shifts, it slips out and falls to the floor, along with Peter’s favorite shaving brush.

“Hey, uncle of Scott’s asshole rescue,” Stiles says, waving without looking up. “So generally, using the asshole as the messenger’s not a great way to make a good impression, but I’ll admit it made me curious. I was gonna wait till Friday but I ended up checking out your social media footprint, and you’re unapologetically proud for somebody with as many hate threads devoted to them as you have, and I figured what the hell and came over and you have this big ol’ hole in your spare bedroom’s wards. It’s kind of like somebody sneaks out of there a lot.”

“Or into it,” Peter mutters, turning to…damn it. Derek’s gone.

Peter turns back and then twitches because in the intervening nanosecond, Stiles has shifted himself to lounge on the couch arm, barely a foot from Peter. He’s got Peter’s tablet and is swiping around on it—Peter glances over and finds the history book lying abandoned on the bookcase—and that is because…he is restructuring Peter’s showpiece garrison in the empire-building app Peter is somewhat addicted to.

“You’ve got way, way too many spies and not enough mines, you’re gonna have an armor shortage,” Stiles mutters. “Also, what are you, a closet archer? Heavy artillery all the way, man, the longbow was a big deal for pitched battles but cannons are what killed the castle star.”

“Interesting,” Peter says, blinking rapidly. Because contrary to what his nephew and nieces think, he can be caught off-guard.

Stiles makes a puzzled noise, looking up, all wide brown eyes and baby-milk skin with a dusting of faint, strangely vulnerable freckles, and for a second he looks so disarmingly innocent that Peter experiences a chest pang. The kind of pang one gets when questioning a fundamental piece of one’s lifestyle.

By the time the pang runs its course, Stiles has slid off the couch arm and come right up to Peter, so that they’re virtually nose-to-nose. He stares into Peter’s face, pupils tellingly wide, and then abruptly slinks around behind Peter, twisting up on Peter’s other side to peer at and poke something on Peter’s arm.

“So that’s what I’m smelling in your closet,” Stiles says, poking Peter’s arm again. “Yellow wolfsbane. You been distilling without a license?”

“I have a license,” Peter says, irritation momentarily distracting him. “I am fully permitted and licensed and otherwise authorized for my still that I wouldn’t need if we could fully trust the authorities to properly police the quality of commercially-produced—”

Stiles pulls up Peter’s shirt, looks under it, and then rubs his hand up and down Peter’s stomach as if he’s trying to count the muscles. “Nice,” he says, and his head tilts forward cheek-first, nuzzling from Peter’s collarbone up under Peter’s jaw. 

It pushes Peter back and he grabs at Stiles for balance and yes, his hands end up on Stiles’ hips, but Stiles is currently holding onto his wrists and repositioning them to cup the buttocks so Peter thinks it’s fair to say Stiles isn’t offended. And then Stiles hops up and suddenly his legs are clamped around Peter’s waist and his hands are tucked into Peter’s shirt-collar, kneading at Peter’s shoulders, and Stiles is grinning down at Peter.

“So, did not sample the wolfsbane, but just as well ‘cause I’d rather not do the whole ER trip thing figuring out how potent your shit is,” he says. “Wanna fuck?”

Peter opens his mouth to reply.

Instead, he and Stiles end up on the couch, rendering that a complete moot point, even if his mouth were free for such things. Stiles’ hands are in his pants, and then his pants are on the floor, and while he does manage to get his own hands up the other man’s shirt, it is decidedly Stiles who flexes out of that and then straddles Peter, panting, rocking his weight onto the fingers he has shaping out Peter’s erection against Peter’s—Peter groans gratefully, hiking himself up as Stiles pulls open his fly, then settles back against the couch. It’s going _much_ quicker than he expected, but he’s hardly a neophyte and he just needs to catch his breath and—

Except that while he’s doing that, Stiles is busy working his cock and licking up the middle of his chest and then nibbling at that spot just under his jaw that completely knocks out his higher brain functions. Peter does breathe, but it’s in ragged, moaning bursts, while kneading the couch till a faint zipping noise gets his attention and he looks and realizes he’s just gone and shredded his furniture like some hormonally-incapacitated teenager. He frowns and then Stiles sits on his cock.

So they have sex. It’s very _good_ sex, and Peter certainly enjoys it. Even if, to be honest, he can’t really remember it in details so much as hazy, meandering sensations that send little, prickling shudders through him just from the memory. And, well, all right, he’s not remembering it so much as involuntarily triggering a cascading recall every time he shifts a little bit and suddenly _that_ part of him aches or feels sticky or just flat-out burns, in the most overwhelmingly pleasant of ways.

They end in Peter’s bed so logically, they must have done it in the living room and the bedroom. Peter also has a vague memory of his kitchen, and Stiles rambling about sugars topping protein for short energy bursts, and the feeling of fingers stretching him wide enough for his mind to fall out while his hands dig frantically through his fruit bowl, but he’s not confident that all of that actually happened. Though he does smell like squished tangerines.

Mostly his nether regions, he decides, sniffing. He inches a little more towards the edge of the bed and a strange, twisting, not-quite painful feeling starts up in his groin, then radiates up into his buttocks and down his thighs, making his muscles clench till he finds himself mindlessly humping his soft, rather sore cock against the mattress to try and relieve the strain. Peter…doesn’t think anything larger than fingers went into his ass, but he still feels vaguely empty, and like empty is not actually how he should feel. And then he shifts again and the sheets peel off his inner thighs and _God_ , that hurts.

“Um, yeah, you got a little chafed, I mean, I’m sorry but I thought you guys healed up?” Stiles says. From the sound of his voice and feet, he’s wandering around the bed. He goes near the hall, then comes back and his head suddenly drops into Peter’s view. “You were holding up pretty well till we got to the edible lube.”

[A common error is to assume that all weres operate the same way. Why, Peter doesn’t know, since wolves and big cats don’t even use the same killing methods, but anyway, even weres themselves tend to assume that as their kind go, so go weres in general. So werewolves think all types of weres break down into alpha and beta and omega, even though there’s absolutely no need for an alpha-beta distinction in a were type that doesn’t form packs. And werecats apparently forget that werewolves developed accelerated healing to deal with frequent but brief territorial battles, not a tongue that can lick at obscenely superhuman speeds, and sustain that licking for an ungodly—if insanely pleasurable—length of time.

So yes. Werewolves have healing powers. This isn’t the same thing as healing _stamina_ , mind you.]

“The what?” Peter says. He understands that Stiles is speaking English but that’s about it.

“Lube. Edible.” Stiles holds a small, flattened plastic tube in front of Peter’s face, then pulls it away. Then he’s gone.

A second later, a pair of feet lightly touch down on either side of Peter’s waist. Peter hisses as the shake of the mattress roughly unsticks more bedsheet from his skin, then yelps and jerks his knees up, just as Stiles grabs his buttocks and shoves him flat against the bed. Stiles is—well, honestly, Stiles’ strength is irrelevant because Peter could be beaten by putty at this point.

Anyway, Stiles holds him down and then starts slathering something up the inside of his thighs. Peter snarls weakly, scrabbling at the bed, and his mind starts putting things together—lube, werecat tongue, his ass feels like somebody licked it raw and that was a very, very good process but not a good result now—and he makes a serious effort to struggle onto his elbows. Except that’s not lube Stiles is applying, it’s some kind of cooling, soothing salve and Peter does think he hears a little click as his eyes roll back and he flops into the bed again.

“Honestly, it’s not like I was gonna kink it up, but we ran out of the regular and I just grabbed the only other tube you had, and it actually tastes like mint! Like really, it’s something I could totally smear on my Oreos if I was feeling frosting-deficient, and I’ve gone through a lot of bad, bad edible lube, believe me,” Stiles is saying. He dabs a little salve up between Peter’s buttocks, pausing every time Peter whimpers. “Definitely adding this one to the Amazon auto-reorder list. Anyway, you seemed pretty into it at the time.”

“Stiles,” Peter manages to groan.

“Yeah?” Stiles says, sounding distracted. He’s got his hand on Peter’s hip—he suddenly heaves Peter up and ducks his head to peer underneath. Makes a tsking noise before rolling Peter completely onto his back and then grabbing Peter’s cock. “Oh, hey, hey, chill, you’re clearly done, I’m just getting your front too.”

Peter’s too busy clutching the bed and trying to flash his throat out of the sudden stinging-going-to-mindbendingly-wonderfully-numb sensations flowing up and down his cock, but he sort of nods his acknowledgment. Stiles gives his cock a good, thick, blissfully soothing layer of salve, and then, just as Peter’s sighing and relaxing into it, Stiles lightly bops the head of his cock. “Better?” he asks.

The noise Peter makes can best be characterized as a strangled assent that yes, yes, Stiles has completely worn him out, he’s done, Stiles isn’t, he absolutely knows it and isn’t about to contest it and please, please, _please_ so-good-can’t-stop-throat-throat-see-my-throat-done-I’m-done-all-yours.

Stiles sprawls next to him, looking down at Peter with a lazy grin, and purrs.

[A werecat purr is not a werewolf purr, and vice versa. Actually, “purr” for werewolves is a misnomer, since although the sounds may be superficially similar to the untrained ear, they are created using different body parts and different processes, and of course, communicate entirely different meanings most of the time. Werewolves normally purr to express comfort and pleasure and happiness—in the collective sense.

Werecats, and Peter has been told this by sufficient numbers of them to think this is not a stereotype, can do that, but they prefer to purr to express their sole, individual, comfort and pleasure and happiness. It’s the difference between a cheer and a smirk.] 

“So, anyway, Peter.” Stiles absently scratches some caked sweat and other bodily fluids off the side of his face. He looks at his fingers, frowns and sniffs, and then rubs them against the bedsheet, fastidiously checking till he’s sure he’s transferred everything. “Awesome sex. I’m still pissed at your dumbass nephew so I’m not gonna say it made up for this morning, but I’m gonna say…awesome. Yeah. So I’ll call you, all right?”

Then Stiles hops off the bed. Peter is _not_ comfortable with this, for reasons his sex-wrecked brain can’t immediately articulate, but he’s sure enough of the feeling that he whines in protest. Then, with an effort that leaves him dizzy with dancing spots in his vision, he manages to turn over onto his side, just as Stiles pops back into view.

“Though hey, um, I…kind of was in the middle of a really interesting chapter, and also, I got stains on the cover, so I’m just going to…borrow your book here and fix it,” Stiles says. As soon as he’s back in Peter’s vision, he’s edging his way out of it, the book in his arms shifting from in front of him to tucked under an arm to sticking out from behind his back. “No charge, I’ll even cover mailing it back, okay? Okay! Bye!”

Peter opens his mouth. This time, he gets quite a while to think of what should come out of it, since there’s nobody around to interrupt him.

Eventually, he closes his mouth. There’s no point in fighting the inevitable, after all, and he needs the nap that is creeping up on him. He lets it come, and sleeps deeply and well. And then, when he wakes up, he showers and tidies his apartment and then goes to pay a call on his nephew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Derek is referencing the [stolen kidney](http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney.asp) urban legend. Speaking of, in a world where weres are real, you gotta wonder what the urban legends are like.
> 
> Stiles is referring to the very simple hack of figuring out somebody's phone passcode/unlock pattern by looking at the smudges on the screen.
> 
> I admit that this story was somewhat influenced by TV Tropes' [list](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThisIndexMeows) of cat tropes. And the stray thought that Stiles' ADHD is really not that different from watching the average cat get distracted by about fifteen different things while crossing a small room.


	2. Chapter 2

Chris reaches to take the keys out of the ignition, then pulls his hand back and looks over at Allison. “It looks pretty busy, you know,” he says. “Maybe we should go and get you signed up for classes first. The seats for the good professors are probably going to get snapped up fast and the center isn’t going anywh—”

Allison crosses her arms across her chest and looks at him. “Dad. You promised.”

“Yeah.” Chris grimaces and glances out the windshield at the people going in and out of the center, and then sighs. “Yeah, I know.”

“It looks like they’re hosting a bunch of kids, doesn’t it?” Allison says a little more gently. “Maybe it’s a field trip from the local school. So I bet everybody will be distracted with the kids, so it’ll actually be a good thing if we go now.”

She’s trying to comfort him and it makes him feel like a pathetic excuse for a father. He takes the keys out of the ignition and checks that all the charms and wards are in place. And then, before he can lose his nerve again, he unstraps his gun holster from under his coat and pulls that off and hands it over to Allison.

“I’ll be right in the lobby,” she promises, wrapping up the straps around the holster and then tucking it into her bag. “Anyway, I don’t see any news vans or anything like that, so it looks like they’re keeping their promise about confidentiality so far, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Chris mutters.

He’s being kind of unfair on the center staff, who have been very helpful in relocating him and Allison across state lines with just a short pause when he mentioned their last name. Admittedly, that was all done over the phone and through email and some gargantuan packages of informational materials, so for all he knows, they’ve been secretly…he’s being paranoid. He is a hunter, but he’s also a werecat now, and he needs to get out of this damn car and figure out how that second one works.

Right after he gets out, as he’s shutting the car door, he glances at the center entrance and two young women stroll out of it, then stop and stare at him. They’re about Allison’s age, a blonde and a redhead, and he’s not sure about the redhead but the blonde demonstrates she’s a werecat by giving him a wide, fanged, highly hostile grin.

Chris automatically shifts his arm and then catches himself, because one, he doesn’t have his gun and two—for God’s sake, he is in the parking lot of a community center and he can see small children running around the lobby. He doesn’t know what problem the woman has with him but if anybody’s going to escalate it, it won’t be him.

“Dad,” Allison says, a little loud, as she walks around the front of the car to his side. She’s unfolded her arms and is pivoting herself so that she never fully loses sight of the two women. “So, we’re supposed to go in and ask for a…what was her name? The turning specialist?”

The redhead’s brows rise slightly, and then she makes a curt, dismissive noise and turns on her heel. She goes half a step, then rolls her eyes and reaches back to drag the other woman with her. She doesn’t look back, but the blonde does, still grinning, though now there’s a little bit of a curious tinge to her threatening behavior.

“What is their deal?” Allison mutters. She comes up beside Chris as they walk across the parking lot, but then looks over at the retreating pair. When she gets the blonde’s eye, she pointedly holds up her hand and flexes her fingers in a very catlike, curling gesture.

Chris puts his arm around his daughter’s shoulder, which just so happens to require tugging her back, too. “Allison.”

“Dad, they were challenging—well, that one was, anyway,” Allison mutters.

She’s still glowering at the two women, but they go through the doors and a receptionist almost immediately calls a cheerful greeting to them. The schoolkids are just disappearing down a hallway, the line of them snaking around a stepladder placed under where part of the ceiling has been removed.

“I’m so sorry about the mess,” the receptionist says. “Our internet’s been acting up all week and we finally got somebody in to look at it, and they’ve just been poking holes everywhere, trying to fix it. But anyway…are you the Argents?”

“Yeah, we are. I’m Allison and this is my dad,” Allison says, stepping up with a friendly smile.

“Oh, great! I think Tracy just stepped into the back for a second to help get the kids settled, but I’ll run on back and tell her you’re here,” the receptionist chirps. “Just take a seat, make yourself comfortable.”

She gets up and slides out from behind the counter as she speaks, grabbing a handful of files along the way. Chris mutters something and she smiles absently at him, then disappears down the hall. So…he supposes they should wait, and turns around and then considers his options.

Allison’s a little more adaptable. “This is cool,” she says, plopping down into one of the oversized beanbag chairs that populate the lobby. She frowns and looks down to either side of herself, then gives the beanbag a hard poke. “Oh, hey, Dad, look. This must be that self-sealing memory foam stuff that one catalog was talking about. You can rip right into it and it just closes back up.”

[Modern society being what it is, people turning were relatively late in life is no longer news. Which does not, unfortunately, mean there are great resources for dealing with the adjustment, hence the need to relocate near a decent were-support center.

There are, however, a hell of a lot of ridiculous products on the market targeted at new weres. Chris may be having some trouble with his turning but he hasn’t lost his _brain_ , and while he may have regretted being an Argent and even a hunter at various points at his life, he’s never thought that handing over a lot of money to snake-oil peddlers was going to make up for his family’s checkered history.]

“We are not getting one,” Chris says.

His daughter, who is not the one who got a little too engrossed in _Casablanca_ recently and ended up having to shell out over a thousand dollars to reupholster the couch, frowns even more and bounces up and down on the beanbag. “Dad, it’s really, really comfortable,” Allison says, wheedling while trying to look like she’s not wheedling. “You should just sit down and try one. Come on, it can’t hurt. Nobody’s saying you have to take one home.”

Chris looks at her.

Allison gives him a shamelessly pleading look right back. And then, of all things, she swings in her legs and twists around and does her best to curl up on the beanbag. “It’s pretty supportive,” she says. “I don’t think it’s going to mess up your back like our couch does.”

“That’s because I should just go to bed like a sane person instead of staying up till I doze off on that,” Chris mutters with a sigh.

He goes over, not because she’s that persuasive, but because Allison’s been dealing with the brunt of the mess he’s making out of his life, to the point of agreeing to transfer colleges so she can move home and help out, and compared to that, a couple seconds in a stupid gumwad-looking chair is nothing. So he gets down and prods the beanbag next to her, and when Allison rolls her eyes, he caves and tentatively pulls himself into the thing.

“I don’t think it’s designed for you to sit like that in it,” Allison observes.

Which would be sitting straight up, with his legs sticking out in front of him, and no, it’s not. The foam keeps rolling under him, trying to slide him onto his back, and when he makes the mistake of trying to get up to shift to a different position, the damn thing just tips him backward. Chris swears and lashes out, claws first, and gets one hand stuck in the foam and the other in the—the stepladder.

He yanks at his hands to free them. They come loose, but the stepladder swings down on him and instinct takes over.

Which is how Chris ends up crouched just inside the hole in the ceiling, looking down at the fallen stepladder and his worried daughter. Thankfully, he had enough brains to knock the ladder away from her, but still. He’s in the damn ceiling.

“Dad?” Allison says, peering up at him. “Dad, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Chris mumbles. He pauses, takes a deep breath, and tries to will away his tail, which is lashing wildly around in the crawlspace. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just—pride a little bruised.”

“It’s okay, really,” Allison says in a soothing voice. “Nobody saw, I don’t think anybody even heard—”

“What the hell happened?” demands a—great, it’s John Stilinski, storming in the front door. “It sounded like somebody bashed a door out.”

“Oh, my God, is everybody all right?” says the receptionist’s breathless voice as she hurries in from the other direction.

Allison quickly shifts around to deal with those two, while Chris gives up on getting rid of his tail. Instead he reaches around to grab it, so at least it doesn’t hook on some wire and cause a power outage on top of everything else. It’s bushy as a raccoon’s tail, and feels stiff as a wirebrush, and doesn’t really want to bend so he ends up contorting around till he’s practically lying on it to keep it from whisking out.

“…an accident, he only was bitten a month ago and he’s still really jumpy,” Allison is saying earnestly.

“Well, honestly, if he wasn’t jumpy, I’d be worried,” says a new voice, a woman. “It’s all right, no harm done, we’re used to having the lobby take some damage.”

“Yeah, sorry about running in like that,” John says. “Listen, Tracy—” so she’s the turning specialist Chris is supposed to meet with, that’s doing nothing to smooth out Chris’ tail “—don’t want to take up much of your time, especially when a client like that needs you, but I was just stopping by to let you know that the new hunter’s moved in.”

“Oh, all right,” Tracy says, as if John’s just told her that the weather is nice. “He’s licensed and everything, so I’ll just have Eva update our records and that should be that, right?”

“It should be,” Allison breaks in sharply. There’s an awkward pause, during which Chris goes from squeezing his tail to his tail squeezing up around him. “I mean, the law is, if the hunter’s got a valid license, which they can only get if they’ve passed a background check, they just have to register with the local sheriff’s office and the supernatural-relations office. They wouldn’t even need to tell the local were-support center.”

John makes a semi-thoughtful, semi-puzzled noise. “Well, yeah, they don’t have to, but any hunter who really is doing it for the community and not just going for the glory would at least stop by and say hi, get to know the local were leaders. But I already stopped by anyway, so you and your dad don’t need to worry about it. We’re real clear with people that we don’t tolerate intolerance around here.”

“Just oxymorons,” Tracy says, amused.

“Now you sound like my kid,” John says in a pained voice. He takes a couple steps back. “Anyway, Allison, if you or your dad ever think somebody’s threatening you, feel free to come straight to me, all right?”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Allison says. She’s using that very reasonable, polite voice that mean she’s about two seconds from pulling a weapon.

“Good.” John hums a little, a very low, almost subvocal noise that runs effortlessly through the air and through Chris’ bones, till he thinks he can actually feel his body shaking a little looser. “Well, I’m sorry your dad’s having a rough time, but Tracy’s one of the best at easing you into a turning. And if there’s anything I can do to help, or if you two just want to stop by and get to know the local pride, let me know.”

“Okay,” Allison says, slightly more friendly.

“I’d stop and meet your dad now, but I have to—oh, Tracy, one other thing. Scott’s in today, right?” John says. “Can you tell him that Stiles—”

“He was, but then a friend of his came by and they went off,” Tracy says. “I’m not sure if he’s coming back today, to be honest. It looked like they had a little bit of an emergency on their hands.”

John makes a disgusted noise. “Probably has to do with why my son has five hundred pounds of sand and a broken Jeep…anyway, never mind. I’ll just…go try and keep it from escalating to a damn felony, excuse me.”

Tracy laughs and walks John to the door, while the receptionist wanders back behind her desk. Then Tracy asks whether the receptionist can go check somebody in another room. The receptionist leaves and Tracy walks back under the hole in the ceiling. Chris scrunches back, but there are just some light clacking sounds, and then the click of Allison’s sandals against the stepladder.

“Dad?” Allison says, her head popping up into the crawlspace. “Dad?”

“Yeah,” Chris says.

He and Allison look at each other for a little bit, and then Chris takes a couple deep breaths. His tail retracts, slow for the first couple inches, and then suddenly disappears completely. His sight flickers—he hadn’t even noticed he’d gone to were vision—and then he drags himself forward. Allison smiles, then quickly ducks out so he can climb out of the ceiling.

“Hi, Mr. Argent,” Tracy says warmly, holding out her hand. “I know we spoke on the phone, but I always like to repeat an introduction in person.”

“Yeah. Yeah, thanks,” Chris says. He takes her hand and gives it a shake. Then he starts to move back, except she’s still standing expectantly. He stops, then grimaces and tilts forward. “Sorry, I’m still—”

“Oh, no worries,” Tracy says, gently but briskly bumping their foreheads together. “The most important rule here is that there’s no one way to do this. The right way is the way that makes you feel the most comfortable.”

Allison snorts. “Well, I’m glad somebody around here is saying that.”

Tracy glances at her, a little bit of embarrassment leaking past the professional friendliness. “I know the sheriff can come off a little rough, but he’s really a very fair man, and very nice once you get to know him.”

“Yeah, well, I think that might want to wait till I’m not jumping into the ceiling,” Chris mutters. He glances at Allison, then makes himself look back at Tracy. “All right, then…”

“No time like the present,” Tracy says cheerfully. “Just this way, and we can get started.”

* * *

“If he said he’d call, then shouldn’t you just wait for that?” Derek asks desperately.

His uncle isn’t known for being merciful anyway, but at that Peter rolls his entire head in disgust. And then Peter grabs Derek by the arms and shoves him up against the wall and pushes in till they’re literally nose-to-nose. “Even you are not that inept at relationships,” Peter says. “Derek. Those two incidents last year that your mother doesn’t know about? The ones where you nearly got kicked out a semester before you graduated with your very, very expensive masters’ degree?”

“All right, fine, just—” Derek gets his hands up and shoves Peter off, then dusts his arms off where Peter had been grabbing “—what the hell am I supposed to do? Tell Scott that you want to have sex with Stiles again?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, as if that’s going to work twice in a row,” Peter scoffs. “I want you to go hang out with Scott.”

Derek actually isn’t stupid. He might not be the evil mastermind his uncle is, or even be obsessed with trolling people like his sisters, but he grew up with all three of them, plus got to watch—and still gets to watch—his mother do easy laps around the rest of the packs in the region. Manipulation’s not really his idea of a good time, but he understands how it works.

He just doesn’t understand how it’s supposed to work here. “I only met him for a couple minutes and he was trying to kill me for most of those minutes, so I’m not sure that me being nice to Scott is going to win you points with him.”

“Do you actually think I’m relying on you to win somebody over for me,” Peter says. “I didn’t say be nice to Scott. I said hang out with him. Be yourself, don’t strain something. And do it till I tell you to stop.”

“I still don’t get it,” Derek says.

Peter puts both hands over his face and then makes a series of increasingly aggravated, violent-sounding noises into them. “ _Did I say you needed to get it_ ,” he hisses when he looks back up.

Twenty minutes, Derek pulls up to the local were-support center, where Scott works as a counselor when he’s not doing the same thing for the university’s center. “Hi,” he says to the receptionist. “Is Scott McCall in?”

The receptionist stares at him. She has a piece of tape in her hand because she was taping shut an envelope when he walked in, and she keeps staring at him and holding that.

“Do I…do you need to see ID or something?” Derek sighs. It’s been a while since he’s been to a center, but he’s pretty sure if something like that had been put into place, his mother would have torn up a couple rightwing politicians to get it stopped.

“Oh! Oh, no, of course not, sorry, it’s just…” Blinking, not looking away from him, the receptionist reaches for the phone. “Aren’t you Derek _Hale_?”

Derek narrows his eyes. “And…you want to know because…”

“Well, it’s just—oh, no reason, none at all,” she says in a very fake-friendly voice. “I’ll just…Scott! Scott! Look, it’s Derek Hale!”

Scott walks out of the hallway, looking mildly surprised and shaking glitter off his sleeve. “Oh, hi,” he says. “Are you signing up for a volunteer slot?”

The receptionist makes a disbelieving noise, then excuses herself to go make copies of something. Scott glances her way, then looks back at Derek. “No, I’m not,” Derek says. “I’m here because your roommate hit up my uncle.”

[Derek does his part for the community, which is a hell of a lot more than the countless freeloaders he’s seen ride his family’s coattails over the years. So just because he doesn’t do exactly like his mom and his sisters and sign up for every potential high-profile photo-op opportunity to give back, doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. He just doesn’t want to show it where it’s going to lead to a bunch of people making a bigger deal out of the fact that it’s him than out of whatever or whoever he’s helping.

This is probably why, despite all the trouble it causes him, he keeps ending up around Peter. Because for a man who’s as attention-loving as Peter is, there’s nobody better about keeping the actual hard evidence of it from showing up.]

“ _Oh_ ,” Scott says, pained. He pauses and reaches into his pocket like he’s taking out his phone, and then looks back up. “Well, that explains the texts. I thought we were okay for catnip till the end of the week.”

“I…don’t want to know,” Derek says. “It’s not important anyway. What’s important is that now my uncle’s going to be stalking your roommate.”

“Well, he shouldn’t do that,” Scott immediately says, looking worried. And then, just as Derek is beginning to think that Scott might be sensitive in the right way here, he shakes his head and grabs Derek’s arm and starts tugging him towards the door. “We should find him and tell him not to before he gets hurt.”

Sheer surprise, not alpha strength, is why Derek gets hauled several feet into the parking lot before he pulls free. “Wait, wait, listen, I guess that somehow, you haven’t heard of my uncle, even though you’re an alpha, but—”

“No, I have,” Scott says, with enough of a wrinkled face that Derek believes him. But then he shakes himself and looks embarrassed. “I mean, I’ve heard some rumors, but they’re just rumors—”

“Whatever you heard, the truth is even worse and he is twice as bad as you think,” Derek says.

Scott stops and looks oddly at him. “Okay. So…you think he _should_ get hurt?”

“I…” At the last second, Derek remembers how they met and decides that answering that truthfully is not going to win Scott over. “…don’t think we should be worrying about your friend hurting Peter. That’s not the problem here.”

Scott looks even more oddly at him. Then the man sighs and pulls out his phone. Taps at it, puts it away, and looks back up at Derek. “This is going to take a while so I was just letting the center know I need the afternoon off,” he says. “I think we need to talk through this.”

“Fine,” Derek says. “I know a place we can go.”

Ten minutes later, Scott is shaking his head. “This…really isn’t what I was thinking about,” he says. “I think we should talk about it first before we do anything. Also, I really, really don’t think we should be vandalizing somebody’s car.”

Derek looks at the other man. “I’m not vandalizing it, I’m taking out the spark plug. Have you never worked with cars before?”

Scott’s eyes widen. Then, making a scandalized noise, he lunges forward and grabs Derek by the wrist and hauls Derek away from the car. “What are you—we can’t do that! You’re going to get somebody killed!”

“I am not. You _really_ don’t know cars,” Derek snaps, yanking himself free.

He feints to the right, then swings left. Scott…doesn’t fall for the feint and tackles Derek back over the curb and behind a bush. Then, as Derek’s trying to knee him in the face, Scott just goes and flips Derek over his leg before crawling on top of him.

“Look, you can’t just mess with people’s cars, you—” Scott starts.

The reason he stops and they both freeze is because the door on the nearby office building swings open. Footsteps stroll across the parking lot, coming nearer and nearer to the car…stopping right in front of it. “Oh, for—” Peter says, with an irritated sigh. Then he pauses. He sniffs loudly, then laughs and shuts the car hood. “Well, well, I suppose that’s one way to maintain engagement.”

Peter gets in the car and drives off while Derek curses into the grass. “You were going to murder your own uncle?” Scott says.

“ _No_ , actually.” Derek spits out some grass. “If you take out the sparkplug, that just means the car can’t start and he can’t go after your roommate, you moron.”

“Oh. _Oh_. Oh, well—okay, I’m sorry I said that. What you were doing did look pretty shady, but I should’ve asked more questions.” Scott lets go of Derek’s shoulders and shifts back, so Derek twists around to face him. The other man blinks hard and Derek belatedly realizes he should’ve just waited for the guy to get completely off him, and then they wouldn’t be in the awkward position of Scott accidentally shifting to sit right on Derek’s groin. Flushing, Scott jerks his ass forward to the safe zone of Derek’s belly. “Though I was still going to stop you from messing with his car.”

“Great. Because giving him a way to easily move around is really going to help here,” Derek says.

“Well, I don’t think taking out his car is going to help. Couldn’t he just shift and run over that way?” Scott points out. “We don’t live that far from here in wolf terms. And actually, it’d be a lot easier for him to sneak around in wolf form.”

[So the thing about werewolves, even born ones like Derek’s family, is that they aren’t wild animals. Being able to duck into the woods for the full moon is really important, but so are indoor plumbing and microwaves and central air conditioning. There are werewolves who don’t appreciate the ability to not have to bury your own shit, to nuke a frozen dinner when you’re too tired to chase down a rabbit, and to not die of heat stroke, and the vast majority of werewolves, Derek included, think that they are batshit crazy stupid.

Derek grew up in suburbia, and he’s happy he did. And if you think that raising your family in a one-room hole with no cable TV and a zillion killer parasites makes you a better hunter, he’ll also be happy to demonstrate what better nutrition and access to regular healthcare can do all over your disease-ridden face.

So he momentarily forgot Peter’s a werewolf on top of being terrifying. That’s what Peter _does_ to him.]

“It still would’ve slowed him down,” Derek says after a couple seconds, during which Scott patiently, and very annoyingly, waits for him to collect his thoughts. “You don’t know him, he takes at least a half-hour to get ready to go out. He’d at least have to stop and cache a bunch of outfits around your place so he can get dressed after he shifts.”

“I still don’t think you have to mess with his car to stop that,” Scott says. “We could just put up alarm wards, or—”

“Look, it’s a moot point anyway, he’s probably driving over there right now.” Derek shoves himself up on his elbows, ready to shove Scott off, and then he glimpses something white on his arm. He takes a closer look and then hisses as he realizes how badly his coat got scratched up in his and Scott’s tussle.

Scott sees it too, and winces and reaches out to pat his hand over the scrapes. He’s really touchy-feely for an alpha. “Oh, man, I’m so sorry, I just was—I’ll get you a new coat.”

“Thanks, but if you really want to help me, you’d get on board with keeping my uncle away from Stiles,” Derek says. “And no, talking to Peter won’t help. He’s my family, okay, trust me, when he’s like this, nothing stops him short of getting hospitalized—huh. Wait, actually, you’re an alpha, you could challenge him.”

For a second Scott just stares at him. Which Derek can understand, even if he thinks Scott’s just wasting even more time. But then Scott sighs and looks frustrated, for some reason. “I’m not going to challenge your uncle. One, I don’t want to hurt anybody—”

“You aren’t actually going to fight him, you’re just challenging him so he has to figure out whether a good lay is really worth getting his ass handed to him,” Derek says.

A flicker of red goes through Scott’s eyes, though his voice remains very even. “Can you call Stiles by his name?” he says. “He’s my friend, and it’s not like this is his fault.”

“Actually, it is,” Derek says. “He’s the one who went and screwed Peter.”

The red flicks into Scott’s eyes again, while…Derek had forgotten Scott had one hand on him, right up till Scott gives his arm the kind of squeeze that isn’t painful but that tells you exactly how painful it could be, if pushed. Scott notices too, and removes his hand with a grimace. Then takes a deep breath and sits back, running that hand through his hair.

“Look, let’s just…I’m not fighting your uncle because this is about Stiles, not me, and it’s up to Stiles and honestly, we should just tell him and see what he thinks,” Scott says.

“We should _not_ tell him, because the last time we did that, he slept with my uncle,” Derek snaps.

“Well, I’m not just going to make his choices for him!” Scott snaps back. He grabs at his hair again, blowing out his cheeks, and then looks at Derek. “I know you said your uncle was going to stalk him, but—but what does that mean?”

“Are you serious?” Derek says. “It means he’s going to follow Stiles around and spy on him and probably do all kinds of manipulative things till Stiles thinks seeing him again is a good idea. What the hell did you think it meant?”

Scott rubs the side of his face. “Okay, but what if Stiles actually is going to see him again anyway?”

“Then he should just say that and cut off whatever the hell Peter is planning,” Derek says.

“So we should talk to Stiles,” Scott says.

“What? No, I just said—what if he says he doesn’t want to see Peter again?” Derek says.

“Then we tell your uncle to not bother him, and if he does anyway, then I guess we try and make sure that he doesn’t get too hurt,” Scott says.

Derek tries very, very hard to swallow down the increasing urge he has to just punch Scott off of him. “Okay, you know what? We can try it your way, once, and when that doesn’t work, will you listen to me?”

“Sounds like a deal,” Scott says. He smiles down at Derek and it’s…weird and throws Derek for a second, which is probably why, when Scott gets up and then offers him a hand, he takes it. “I mean, I’m still not going to hurt people unless it’s absolutely necessary, but I’ll definitely consider any suggestions you have. I would anyway, I just think we really need to talk to Stiles, too.”

“Fine, whatever, let’s just get it done,” Derek says, dropping Scott’s hand as soon as he’s on his feet.

They go to Scott and Stiles’ apartment to have the talk, and as Derek expected, it is completely pointless, thanks to Stiles. Who, fully-shifted, is a lanky, faintly ginger cat, vaguely cougar-like except for the pointed ears, sprawling all over the living room floor, paws and tail twitching as he slowly puddles in the sunbeams and completely ignores them.

“So if you’re not interested, you should tell Peter to back off,” Scott says.

Stiles’ ear swivels towards them, and then swivels back. He huffs and his tail flops to the floor, barely an inch from Scott’s toes.

“He’s not listening,” Derek says.

Groaning, Stiles rolls over onto his side, then tucks up a hind paw to skritch at his side. He snorts a little bit, ears relaxing to half-mast, and then lets out a long, low snore.

“It’s just it’ll be a big pain when he shows up, you know that,” Scott says, as if Derek’s not there. “And there’s no reason for him to waste his time—”

Stiles makes a noise that sounds to Derek just like the lazy grunts Stiles has been making since they walked in, but for some reason Scott straightens up. He takes a step towards Stiles, who cracks open an eye. The corner of Stiles’ mouth pulls back into a grimace and then he shifts human, still sprawled out on the floor.

“’m got his book,” Stiles mumbles.

Scott looks at Derek, who has no idea what Stiles means except that, as usual, he’s regretting that he didn’t question Peter a little more. Then Scott looks back at Stiles. “You took his book even though you don’t want to see him again?”

“’n’t done.” Stiles stretches his arms out till his elbows and wrists pop, then goes slack again, now lying on his belly. “And dunno, I mean, I’ll think about it later.”

“But you have his book!” Scott says. “And Derek says he’s going to follow you around now!”

“Well, he’s not here _right now_ ,” Stiles says, irritated, sounding the most awake he has since they walked in. But then he tucks his head in against his arm, like he’s trying to make them go away just by hiding himself. “So whatever, later, I got a good sunbeam going here.”

And he shifts back to cat as they watch.

[Derek doesn’t understand werecats. It’s not a cats versus dogs joke, and it’s not because he’s a bigot, as if his mother would ever let him get away with that. He doesn’t think that a werecat deserves any less rights than any other were, or any human, and it’s not like he won’t mix with them. Cora and Peter both have a lot of werecat friends so he’s actually met a fair number, and while he wouldn’t call them friends, he still would help them out if they needed it.

It’s just that he doesn’t understand them. Any of them.]

Scott and Derek regroup in the downstairs café. “See?” Derek says.

“That…Stiles actually might want to see your uncle again?” Scott says, frowning. He slouches and fiddles with the sleeve around his latte and Derek absently thinks that he’s never met an alpha who did less dominance-posturing. “It sounded to me like Stiles hasn’t made up his mind and so we should just wait till he does.”

“If we do that, Peter’s going to show up before he runs out of sunbeams,” Derek points out.

Scott looks up, frowning. “Do you think your uncle would actually try and break in?” he says. “Because that’d be a really bad idea, especially if Stiles is napping. Maybe I should stay home and just make sure.”

“You’ll do that but you won’t let me make sure Peter’s car doesn’t start,” Derek says.

“Well, because that wasn’t really going to work and also that might get Peter hurt,” Scott says. He isn’t annoyed so much as…he’s using that tone that teachers use when they’re working with a kid who just doesn’t get it, and who has to be told the same thing ten times. “This is also about making sure your uncle doesn’t get hurt.”

“That would—whatever, the car is done. Just why the hell do you keep thinking that _Peter_ is going to get hurt here? He’s a Hale,” Derek says.

“I know, and…and I’m not trying to insult you or your family, and I _do_ know who the Hales are,” Scott says in the same mildly persistent tone. “But I don’t think you’ve heard of Stiles, for some reason.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “Was I supposed to know who your roommate was? Out of the thousands of people running around this campus?”

“There aren’t that many werecats, and his dad’s the sheriff, and works a lot with the whole were community,” Scott says, looking a little puzzled. “If you ever came by the were center, you’d probably—”

“Well, I don’t. I didn’t know that it was mandatory for all weres to show up there,” Derek snaps. “Didn’t think I needed to know every single were either, just because my mom is in politics.”

Scott inhales a little, his brows drawing together. “That’s not what I was saying.”

“Yeah, sure, you’re just saying that I’m not your kind of were. Well, I wasn’t trying to be,” Derek says.

“I wasn’t—” Then Scott presses his lips together. He lifts his hands and flattens the palms against the table, breathing in and out very slowly, and then he gets up. He starts to move out from the table, then stops so he can grab his latte. “I wasn’t saying that. But I don’t think you’re in a listening mood, so I’m just going to go. If your uncle comes around and Stiles doesn’t like it, I’ll do my best to get your uncle out of it in one piece. Okay?”

And Scott walks out of the café. Going by the clock on the wall, Derek’s been with Scott for a solid hour and a half—he frowns and does a double-take, then pulls out his phone. But no, it really has been that long. Getting Stiles awake enough to ignore them took a lot longer than he thought.

Anyway, Derek’s been at this for long enough. He figures even Peter—

“Well, that was less than promising,” Peter, who is sitting in Scott’s spot, says.

Derek doesn’t flail, or yell, or do something stupid like that. Derek might stab his toes into the table stand, but he strangles his pained sound and just glowers at his uncle. “Whatever. I hung out with him, so you’d better have done whatever you were planning to do because I’m not doing it again.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Derek,” Peter says airily, while pulling out a folded piece of paper. He hands the paper over to Derek. “I just was walking back from the were-support center and saw you through the front window, and—”

“What the _hell_ is this?” Derek snarls, looking at the paper.

“The center’s inter-pack mentoring program needs volunteers, and _you_ need to demonstrate that you can communicate with werewolves who aren’t related to you.” Peter pauses and lets his expression go from amused to exasperated. “Do you honestly think I just called up the alpha of those two you nearly challenged the other day, and told them, oh, my nephew, he doesn’t _really_ hate your pack, he just hates everyone, and they went of course, I see now, that’s fine?”

“Well, I know nobody believes you, but I thought you blackmailed everybody anyway,” Derek says.

Peter sighs. “Derek. Don’t make me bring your mother into this. All you have to do is show up. I already spoke to the program coordinator and she’s pairing you with one of their most experienced mentors, so even you should be able to sleepwalk through it.”

“I—it’s Scott. You got me paired up with Scott.” For a second Derek just takes in his uncle. “Are you seriously doing all of this just to get laid again?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Derek, sex alone isn’t _that_ important,” Peter says dismissively, getting up. “I’m trying to get a date with Stiles, not just get him into bed again.”

Which is, Derek thinks, staring at his orientation schedule, infinitely worse.

* * *

The first appointment with Tracy is basically a rehash of Chris’ over-the-phone intake interview, where she talks through his file so far and gets a few more details and sees if anything has changed. They also do the getting to know you dance, and at the end of it, she runs him through a couple mental exercises to tide him over till their first real session. But basically, he walks out of there the same as when he went in.

Chris did all his reading beforehand and he’s a realist, and he wasn’t expecting an instant fix. He knows he’ll have to put in the work. But he and Allison get back to the new house and unpacking, and he’s just…fidgety. He’s got a good handle on the super-senses at this point, so sensory overload isn’t a problem, but he keeps getting sidetracked. He can barely get through a box without ending up with his head stuffed into it, sniffing, and when Allison catches him systematically opening and shutting all the kitchen cabinet doors, she makes him stop for the night.

“It’s probably just everything being new, right?” she says. “We made a really big dent and I think we have everything unpacked that we need right now, and anyway, I’m worn out. I’m going to go to bed early, so if you want to walk around and just get used to things, it won’t bother me.”

She’s got a point, so Chris agrees and makes sure she settles down in her room, and then he…walks through the house probably ten times, checking into corners and crannies, before he thinks to actually listen for a second. And hears his daughter sighing and telling herself to ignore the noises.

It’s late, and if Chris is this edgy in the house, he doesn’t want to think about what he might be like if he tried to go out to the backyard. So he goes to his room and gets ready for bed, and then lies on his back, twitching, for about a half hour. Then he gives up and shifts, so at least he’ll be quieter, and he prowls around his bedroom.

By the time morning comes, he knows every inch of it. He’s also fallen asleep on top of some boxes of curtains, so when he finally realizes what time it is, Allison’s already gotten up and made herself breakfast and left him a note telling him she took the car to go register for classes. Chris feels like a terrible dad.

Then he pulls himself together. He texts her to take her time, eats, shaves, gets dressed. Pokes listlessly at some boxes, then decides that if he stays in the house another minute he’s going to lose his mind.

Tracy gave him a map with all of the local were-resource facilities on it, and there’s a communal butchering-slash-meat storage site a couple miles from the house, through the woods that line the backyard. Chris isn’t hungry but he figures he’ll just pace out the distance, see how easy it is to get there and back, and burn off some of his nerves that way.

He really, really means to just walk, not hunt. He leaves the house fully-dressed, in hiking boots that would be difficult to remove in a hurry if he wanted to shift. It’s just that…he gets…distracted.

Okay, so he chases a goddamn squirrel.

Honestly, Chris doesn’t really want to catch it, let alone kill it. But the thing just kept bounding through the leaf litter, sticking its head out and chittering angrily at him every couple of feet, and its tail was straight up behind it and bushy and waving a little bit and he lunged at it. Which made it run, so he jumped up the tree after it, and it keeps leaping from tree to tree and Chris does the same thing and then he falls out of the damn tree.

Fortunately, it’s not far and he’s able to flip himself around so he lands safely. Unfortunately, he lands on top of somebody’s car.

Chris winces at the loud thud he makes, hunching down on the roof, and then, as the noise slowly dies away, he eases himself up. He takes a look at the car and it…damn, he’s dented it a little bit. He bends over and rubs off the scuff mark just to make sure, and yeah, there’s a foot-sized curve now.

Sighing, Chris climbs down from the car and then starts digging around in his pockets, trying to find something he can write a note on so he can leave his contact info for insurance. That’s when he sees the side of the car, and the official crest painted on it, and realizes he’s just dinged a police car.

Also, that’s when…yeah, it would have to be the sheriff’s car. “What are you doing to my car?” John Stilinski says, appearing out of the woods on the other side of the car. He comes around the front of the SUV, frowning. “Actually, what are you doing out here anyway?”

“I just—taking a walk,” Chris says, his hands freezing halfway out of his pockets. Then he nearly jerks them out. He catches himself just in time and slowly removes them, making sure the other man can see what he’s doing at all times. “I live—you know, nearby, over there, and I just…was walking. And saw the car, and it doesn’t have the lights on top.”

John looks at him for a second. Then, without turning away, the man reaches out to the side and opens the front passenger door, and shows Chris a removable siren.

“Oh,” Chris says. Then he grimaces. “I did see the—the crest—”

“And the words, ‘Police Department,’ right here?” John says, nodding towards the text emblazoned on both doors.

“Well, it’s not printed on the top,” Chris mutters.

John tilts his head. “And…were you on top of my car? Why were you on top of my car?”

“I just—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’ll give you my insurance information, I just need to get it out of my pocket,” Chris says.

“Wait,” John says sharply.

Chris freezes. And then comes within a hair of full-shifting as John steps forward and puts his hand on Chris’ shoulder and leans in and _sniffs_ at Chris’ mouth. The only reason Chris doesn’t shift, in fact, is because every single muscle in his body locks up.

Somehow, he still manages to inhale, and get a good whiff of John. Who had cold pasta recently, with a lot of parsley and red-pepper flakes in the sauce, and who’s been outdoors long enough that the paper, ink, plastic smell of offices everywhere is just an undernote to earth and pine needles, warm, musky, healthy as hell and _male_ and Chris probably tears something in his throat strangling that begging noise. Good thing he has the super-healing now.

“Well, you’re sober,” John mutters, leaning back.

[It’s not completely out of line. Several kinds of weres have proven to be more reliable than commercial breathalyzers, and if weres didn’t tend towards authority issues, they’d probably be overrepresented in law enforcement, seeing as how the ones who do join tend to shoot up the chain of command.

God, he smells good.]

Chris blinks. Then it occurs to him that looking surprised about being told that is not going to help his case. Whatever the hell that is. “Yeah, I am, I just—I was just taking a walk. I think I can do that.”

“Yeah, a lot of people who end up in my jail think that too,” John says, glancing down at his…he’s got his phone out. He starts to swipe at the screen, but then hunches oddly and looks back up at Chris. “Okay. Since we’re talking, I…may have been a little hard on you earlier.”

“Earlier?” Chris echoes. He’s still half-distracted by the way the man smells. “You mean when you came by my house?”

“I’m not sure when else we’ve run into each other,” John says, frowning. “And you just dropped on my car, you can’t actually be surprised that I’m looking at you funny right now.”

Chris…can’t say anything reasonable to that, even if he could get his mind off how the way John’s coat-collar is folded from his neck leaves a perfect gap for a nuzzle. So he just keeps his mouth shut and digs out his insurance card.

John makes a frustrated noise, but when Chris looks up, the other man’s not even looking at him. “Okay, I—wanted to say that,” John mutters, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I was kind of judging you based on your family, but I was on the phone with a friend of mine who’s in the Washington state patrol, and he filled me in about you, and I should’ve done that in the first place.”

“Well, you’re not the first person who’s just gone by the family rep,” Chris says, holding out his card.

“Sure, I bet, but I’m the sheriff and I’m supposed to do my own checks,” John says, ignoring it. He steps back and turns towards the car. “Anyway, I mean what I said about looking after the community, but you’re a member of that now too, and all of that applies to you up till you make a case for why it shouldn’t.”

Chris nods absently, then jerks up as he realizes that John’s about to leave. “Wait, don’t you—”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, the poor car takes a hell of a lot worse whenever my kid comes home for the weekend,” John says. He gives the side of the SUV a light smack and iridescent waves of magic ripple out from the spot, and then the distinctive ring of bending metal drifts down from its top. “So can I trust you to get home all right? Because if not…well, I need to head east, but I can take you as far as the park entrance and you might be able to hitch a ride with one of the rangers—”

“No. No. I’ll be fine,” Chris says stiffly. He deliberately turns away as John gets into the car, not because he’s mad at the man, but because he’s trying his damnedest to not just bolt as embarrassment surges back through him.

Fiddling with his insurance card keeps his feet still till John’s car pulls out of sight, but only just. Then Chris heads straight home, without so much as a look at the sky to see whether it might rain. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t, but even if it did, he’d probably stay dry because he’s skulking close to trees and bushes, as close as possible to the ground as he can get without actually shifting to four feet and belly-crawling.

So Chris spends the rest of the morning in one corner of the basement, sorting and stacking his ammunition boxes. It has to be done, and done carefully; one of the most common errors a hunter can make is grabbing the wrong round, and that’s the error that either lands you a murder charge or in the grave, as the saying goes. He’s just taking care of his business.

[In retrospect, he should’ve realized his ancestors had most things wrong, just because nothing in their voluminous research on the supernatural said a damn thing about how flat-out _humiliating_ turning into a were is.]

“Hey, Dad, I ran into the sheriff again, and he asked after you and mentioned that his pride has a get-together every month that we can go to, if we want,” Allison says when she comes home for dinner. “I still don’t like how he was talking about us at the center, but…he does seem like he’s really dedicated to the were community.”

“Oh. Yeah. I ran into him too and he said he jumped to conclusions about my family and he wanted to take that back,” Chris mutters.

Allison looks sharply up from her plate. “Really? Dad, that’s great, that makes me feel a lot better…Dad? Dad, why are you trying to hide under the table?”

“I’m not,” Chris says.

His daughter eyes him, as his chin slips to within a few inches of the table top. He grimaces and digs his heels into the floor, but doesn’t push himself back up.

“So, the sheriff, he seems like he could be nice,” Allison says.

A few seconds later, from his seat under the table, Chris watches his daughter duck down and hand him his plate and silverware. Then she gets her own plate and silverware, and joins him under the table, even as he’s telling her she doesn’t need to do that.

“Dad, come on, I shouldn’t have said that,” she says, ducking her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t make fun of you, I know you’re really frustrated with this.”

“Yeah, well, I am, but—it is stupid. And if you’re teasing, at least I know it’s not getting you down,” Chris sighs.

Allison looks simultaneously exasperated and mortified. “Dad, of course not, I’m here for you whatever happens.”

Chris can’t help but smile at her. She smiles back, and then reaches over to steal a slice of bell pepper from his plate. He snorts and eats his chicken, rotating the plate so that the rest of the peppers are closer to her, and for a couple minutes it’s just them, making it work.

“Does that mean I can ask just when you ran into him, exactly?” Allison says suddenly, a glint of mischief in her eyes. “I thought you were staying in all day and unpacking. He didn’t make _another_ house call, did he?”

“On second thought, your bed looked a little warped when the movers were sliding it down the hall. I meant to check that this morning but forgot. Better do that now,” Chris says, getting up and ignoring his daughter’s protests.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If weres were real and known and integrated, I would fully expect that there would be a huge industry catering to them. Just search 'cat beds' and in this world you'll come across heated and limited-edition designer ones costing hundreds of dollars.
> 
> Cats greet each other with headbutts.
> 
> Scott is more enlightened about respecting other people's ability to make their own choices in this 'verse because I'm pretty sure if Stiles, Lydia and Erica were weres all their lives, they would set him straight on that very early on. Also, I'm modeling werecat pride structure mostly on lions, where the females carry more weight than the males (as opposed to a wolf pack, where alpha actually refers to a breeding pair who share leadership).
> 
> Derek isn't familiar with Stiles, Scott, and the pride partly because (this didn't make it into the story) the Hales aren't based in the same town (though their territory is nearby so the Sheriff and Talia are certainly familiar with each other), and Derek and Peter haven't lived there for that long.


	3. Chapter 3

Contrary to what most people think, Stiles is, in fact, listening when he appears to be staring at a dust mote, or is sunning himself, or is busy with the very important business of determining whether he can catch his tail by reaching between his legs and while also texting three people and resizing a photo on his phone. He’s just not dealing with whatever he’s being told right then, but he hears it and files it away and when it seems like the time, he’ll bring it up again.

So, when he and Scott sit down to breakfast, he’s not being a spaz when he slurps some milk and then pokes his drowsy, grunting, morning-is-my-burden friend. It’s all part of a carefully-plotted plan.

Or at least a plan he spent the time it took to brush his teeth to think about. “Hey, guess what, my stalker hasn’t shown up yet.”

“What?” Scott says, making a valiant effort to pry open his eyes.

[Werewolves are adorable. And Stiles isn’t just saying that because historically speaking, werecats take werewolves’ lunch, stick it in a tree, and then blow raspberries till the wolves get fed up and leave, whereupon the werecats sneak-attack from the back and take over. Hey, he likes werewolves. His best friend since forever is one.

They just make such funny noises when they’re uncomfortable. It’s all whuffs and ruffs and nasally grunts. They’re cute.

Werecats growl in warning when they like you, and when they don’t, they silently maul you. Truth.]

“I said, my stalker? Peter? Not so much as a misplaced scent,” Stiles says, reaching over. He pulls Scott’s phone out of Scott’s pocket, saving it from falling out as Scott drops his head into his hands, and nearly into the cereal bowl, to scrub at his eyes, and then starts swiping away. “I’m starting to get offended, frankly. After all that lead-up, the least he could do is give me enough to justify a report to the campus pol…hey, you’re mentoring drunk asshole nephew?”

“What?” Scott repeats, with slightly more intelligence.

Stiles considers his friend, and then sighs and puts the phone down, because while he is a werecat and thus has a duty to tease anything and everything, he is also a good friend. And what good friends do is make sure their buddy has a full stomach, has washed and put away breakable dishes, and is located conveniently close to a soft landing surface before they deliver the bad news.

“I’m what?” Scott repeats helplessly, from where Stiles has knocked him onto his bed before he went and wolfed out on his poor gym bag. “Derek signed up for what?”

Stiles holds out Scott’s phone and Scott takes it and looks at it. His nostrils twitch, a sure sign he’s disturbed since he’s resorting to instinctive ways of detecting untruths, and then he sits up and starts checking the anti-hacking wards Stiles and the girls put on his phone. “Um, did that while you were waking up,” Stiles has to tell him. “Also, I texted Tracy on my phone and she confirmed, and she can’t believe it either, but she says if anybody can deal with him, it’d be you.”

“But he just—he made such a big deal out of not wanting people to expect him to do that sort of thing!” Scott says. He stares at the phone some more, blinking hard, and then shakes himself. Pulls his shoulders up, then his head, and looks at Stiles with his usual determination to make the best of it. “Well, maybe I was wrong about him. If he’s interested, we definitely can use the help.”

So…Stiles had other things to do for the day, most of which he actually wants to do, but his feline instinct for horrific impending doom is jumping around like it’s a dry winter day and he decided to roll over a wool rug like static electricity doesn’t exist. “You know what, I’ll come in with you,” he says. “It’s been a while for me too.”

“Really? Cool,” Scott says, beaming, and damn it, but Scott’s smile makes Stiles feel like his sacrifice will be worth it.

It probably won’t, but watching Derek Hale make walking into the center look like a catwalk strut into the ninth circle of hell is pretty amusing. Somehow, despite going right up to the receptionist so they’re directly across from each other, he manages to give her side-eye. She’s looking pretty dubious herself, but she straightens up and smiles politely, and points down the hall.

“Derek,” Scott says, waving and walking forward and generally putting out his standard friendly parade. “Hey, over here. Welcome to the center, and thank you—”

“I’m just here because—” Derek sees Stiles and stiffens, then stalks the rest of the way in “—this is your fault.”

Stiles was texting the girls and rearranging his calendar and also checking what the internet has to say about the genetics of being able to smell cyanide, but he sighs and puts away his phone. “Me?”

Derek scowls and raises his hand, probably to make all the accusing jabs his little wolfy heart could want. Except then Scott’s between them and Derek has to redirect his scowl, plus more than a little confusion, at Scott instead. “What?”

“Sorry, I just—I just want to clear something up,” Scott says. He’s still using his nice voice but Stiles can tell he’s getting irritated from how he’s started taking deep breaths every other word. “Did—did you sign up just because your uncle made you?”

“Oh, so now you believe me about him?” Derek says.

“Okay,” Scott says. He glances into the room they had ready for Derek, then ducks inside just long enough to grab his bag. He pulls the door shut behind him, nods to Stiles and then turns an apologetic smile on Derek. “Okay, I see, and I’m sorry that you got dragged all the way out here, but—”

It takes Derek a couple seconds, during which Stiles idly wonders if the man’s ability to process depends on squishing his brows together. “Are you…are you kicking me out?”

“Well, if you don’t want to be here, then I don’t think you’re going to be a very good mentor,” Scott says, about as close as he ever gets to sarcastic. “I get that you and your uncle are—are—okay, honestly, I don’t get the issue there, but anyway, the people who sign up to be mentees really expect their mentors to put in the time and the effort, and if you’re not, it’s not fair to them. Stiles, do you want to—”

“Hey, there,” Stiles says, as Derek shoves in front of them and grabs Scott’s bag. “Um, hello, there’s this thing called respecting other people’s space?”

“Wait,” Derek says, ignoring him. “Wait, wait, I have to do this.”

Scott frowns at him. “You…don’t. It’s a volunteer thing. And if somebody’s making you, you’re not volunteering.”

“Zing!” Stiles says. Because hey, he loves everything about his buddy, even Scott’s inability to not be the best he can be at all times, but he does, in fact, have a little bit of a thing for Scott’s flashes of snark.

Derek’s eyes semi-flick towards him; Scott’s long since learned how to tune out Stiles’ background commentary and works on twisting his bag free of Derek’s hand. “Look, if it’ll help, I can go talk to your uncle about why this is a bad idea.”

“Or I could talk to him,” Stiles says. “I gotta get the next volume of his series anyway and did you know that that book was just part one of three? Do you think he did that on purpose?”

“You—” Derek starts, glowering at Stiles, and then he stifles a pissy noise and twists after Scott, who’s started to walk around. “Hey, hey, wait. Wait—can you wait just a second? It’s not—it’s not all about your roommate and my uncle and their bizarre flirting, okay? I have another reason for doing this.”

Scott slows, then turns around, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “So what’s that?” he says.

“I need to so I don’t get in trouble with those jackasses you stopped me from dumping into the trash last week,” Derek says.

“Oh,” Scott says. He pauses, so Derek snorts and steps back towards the room, like hesitation means the guy’s won, and then raises his hand a little. “Okay, fine, I’ll go talk to them and see what’s up.”

Then Scott turns back around and continues out the center. Derek stands there and his brows appear to be completely frozen in their confused furrows, which gives a lot of support to Stiles’ theory. He’s still by the room, but if he gets really difficult, Stiles knows that all of the center staff are crack shots with tranq guns, even the non-weres, and they can handle him.

Stiles catches up with Scott just as they hit the parking lot. Scott pulls open the door to his car and slings in his bag, then himself, and then, as Stiles climbs in, he puts his hand over his face and sighs. So Stiles reaches over and gives Scott a nice, prolonged ruffle on the back of the head.

[Analogizing werewolves and dogs, aside from being really, really speciesist, is usually bad biology. Dogs are the product of a lot of co-evolution and selective breeding imposed upon them by humans, while werewolves are humans working with a nonstandard tool kit. And if you can’t see the difference between the two, then frankly, Stiles thinks you deserve to get chomped.

But there are a couple things even the most hardline werewolf will admit to having in common. The skritching behind the ears thing, for example. It _totally_ works.]

“Thanks,” Scott says after a couple seconds of reluctant purring. He pulls out his keys and turns on the engine, and then begins to back out of the lot. “I guess…I just thought maybe…”

“I know, Scotty,” Stiles says sympathetically. “But hey, look, he’s literally got no reason to show up at the center now. You’ll probably never see him again. Well. Unless his uncle and me happen to get something going, but if that happens, I can always host double events or something like that.”

Scott laughs and tells Stiles that’s not necessary, and they drive off and Stiles figures that that’s it for Derek and he can get back to plotting what to do about Peter. Of course, then a day later, Stiles opens the door to their apartment and Derek’s standing in the hall.

“Where’s Scott?” Derek snaps.

“Why?” Stiles says.

Derek blinks, then attempts to do that typical werewolf thing where they lean in and spread their shoulders and shrink you out of their way. To which Stiles rolls his eyes and thumps his shoulder against the jamb, pulling out his phone. He makes sure that he tilts that so Derek can see the screen.

“…did you follow Peter on Twitter?” Derek says, horror creeping into his grumpiness.

“Relax, I didn’t use my actual Twitter account, I set up a sockpuppet to do it,” Stiles says. “You know, he retweets an awful lot of cat memes, even before we did the deed. He have a cat fetish or is it just cross-were jealousy?”

Derek opens his mouth, strangles whatever he was going to say, closes his mouth. Reaches for Stiles’ phone, and when Stiles casually flashes his claws—on average, were-feline claws are at least an inch longer than were-canid ones—he wrinkles his nose like he was never going for that anyway and detours his hand to smack at the door. “Where’s Scott?” he says again. “I need to talk to him.”

“Why?” Stiles says.

“Because—” The guy seriously thinks about just stopping there, Stiles can tell from how Derek flares his nostrils and literally seethes his outrage that Stiles isn’t cowering from him. “Because those guys I was going to fight with, their alpha called up my mom and wanted to talk about how even though he doesn’t like his pack being threatened, he _also_ doesn’t approve of his people talking shit about my sister. So now we’re going to have an interpack sit-down and it’s Scott’s fault.”

“Why?” Stiles says.

Derek lets out a little noise that’d be screechy with frustration if it were about an octave higher, but he’s so rumbly that he almost manages to make it a growl. “Because he went and talked to them! Peter was already dealing with it and now—”

“Wait, you mean, where he was blackmailing you to hang with Scott and spy on me so he can do…” And there, Stiles admittedly loses his train of thought. “Um, what is he doing again? Is he actually doing anything? Because I have his background check for getting authorized as a government mediator and I’ve Facebook-friended all of his secretaries going back ten years, and he still hasn’t popped up to even ask for his book back.”

The only reason Derek doesn’t get mauled is because, before he can do more than flash murderous eyes at Stiles, Scott wanders out from the bathroom. “Hey, is that Derek?” Scott says.

Stiles swivels out of the way and Derek inhales for an angry whatever and then stops, because hey, nice guy doesn’t mean soft and Scott can totally carry off the whole dripping-wet, dinky little white towel around his waist, muscled look. So Stiles has never, ever been romantically interested in his buddy, but he’ll admit that on certain occasions, when he didn’t recognize Scott right away, he’s admired. He usually takes that for a sign that he needs to dig himself out of whatever insane project he was doing and remember that werecats are highly social, but anyway, the point is, Scott’s got a good package under the boring clothes.

Speaking of, why Stiles’ wardrobe gets dinged for being ‘aggressively normcore’ while Scott just gets a ‘meh’ pass is—Stiles is getting away from the important thing, which is that Derek _looks_. Sure, he looks pissed at himself for it, but he totally checks out the frontal outline.

“You went and you talked to those guys,” Derek says, shaking himself. “Not only that, you talked to their _alpha_.”

“Yeah, I told you I’d do that,” Scott says.

Derek’s face says he’d forgotten about that, but has remembered just in time to not be able to claim he doesn’t know what Scott is talking about, unless he lies and he either isn’t a liar or he doesn’t think he can pull it off. And he hates all of the above. “Why would you do that?”

“Because if that was what your uncle was holding over your head—and look, I made it very clear to them I wasn’t your alpha, and if that’s the issue, I _do_ have a stake in it because I’m one of the university’s werewolf liaisons and I’m supposed to be making sure nobody’s calling vendetta on each other,” Scott says. “So I just made sure that didn’t happen.”

“But now I have to talk to them!” Derek says. “My mom thinks it’s a great idea! And Cora actually _thanked_ me for standing up for her!”

Scott tilts his head. “That’s…bad?”

“Have you _met_ Cora?” Derek says disbelievingly.

Buried in his phone again, Stiles raises his hand. “Yep, did that last week, needed some dirt on Peter and you’re way, way too high-strung. And I can see where you’re coming from, but also, you are massively overreacting.”

Derek looks back and forth between him and Scott, who is also doing the swiveling-head thing. Then Scott shakes himself, absently tugging his towel back up from where it was slipping on one hip. “If you want, I can go talk to your mom and explain it was all me.”

“She already _knows_ that,” Derek says. “That’s why I’m here. Because I’m supposed to _thank_ you.”

“Well, if you don’t want to, I think I’ll be okay,” Scott says after a long second. “I don’t want to make you do something like that.”

Stiles looks up, because he is a werecat and his ability to sense an impending bug-out is unparalleled throughout the natural world. And Derek doesn’t disappoint: he goes stock-still except for his eyes, which go wide and wild.

Then he disappears. At the end of the hall, there’s a little flicker of leather between the closing elevator doors. “I think you’re confusing him,” Stiles says.

“I don’t even…I give up. I just give up,” Scott mutters, scrubbing at the side of his face. “I don’t even know what he thinks I’m supposed to be doing. I’m just trying to help him out.”

“Which I kind of think might be the core issue, right there,” Stiles says, closing the door. “If it makes you feel any better, I can’t figure out his uncle either. Still haven’t seen a hair of him.”

“Do you think you should just try calling him?” Scott suggests politely.

“Nah, that’s not going to do anything except make us both confused,” Stiles says. “I mean, look at Derek, has talking to him done anything except get him making the crazy eyes?”

Scott opens his mouth, pauses, and then turns around. “I think I’m just going to get dressed and go to class,” he says. “Maybe this will make more sense then.”

Stiles lets that one go, because Scott’s looking like a migraine is coming on and really, Stiles doesn’t need to check every rose-bubble unreality moment Scott has, just the potentially harmful ones. And it’s not like Derek should be coming around again for at least a couple days. That’s plenty of time for Scott to chill out and Stiles to do a little bit of poking and for them to sit down and handle this like normal, sane people.

That works out till after lunch, because Stiles underestimates Derek’s sheer determination to make performance art out of resentfulness. “You literally tracked Scott across campus to tell him that you’re not as big of a dick as you think he thinks you are,” Stiles says. “Listen, I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but that makes you a huge dick. Gigantic. Like, visible from the space station, big.”

Derek does that semi-twitch towards looking at Stiles—it’s starting to get fluid enough Stiles thinks it might be turning into a nervous tic—and then refocuses on Scott, who is very carefully coaxing the poor, trembling pit bull back into its holding pen. “This all started because you had to get involved in an argument that wasn’t your business,” Derek says.

Scott makes a noncommittal sound as he latches the pen door, puts the lock on it, and then tests the lock to make sure it’s completely engaged. He takes the clipboard off the hook on the side of the pen and scribbles a quick note, then puts it back up. “Can you go back into the hall?” he says, looking about three inches to Derek’s left. “You know, this is a quarantine area and normally just shelter staff are supposed to be back here.”

“And what, Stiles is staff?” Derek says.

Stiles flips up his staff pass, which is a three-inch-wide laminated card with bright colors that’s hanging from a lanyard around his neck. “I teach the kittens the strategic art of the hairball.”

“Look, Derek, this is really getting a little silly,” Scott sighs. He waves at the pit bull and it comes up to the screen and makes a friendly noise, which relaxes his stance a little bit. But that goes stiff again, as soon as he turns and makes eye-contact with Derek. “I mean, even if what I did annoyed you, I’m not doing it anymore. So why do you keep showing up? Aren’t you just stretching it out?”

“I wouldn’t show up if things didn’t keep—happening!” Derek snaps. 

“Okay. Okay, fine, I’ll go talk to your uncle,” Scott says, his tone getting short and sharp. “And it won’t be because I’m trying to intervene for you, all right, it’ll be because I don’t want—”

“That’s not going to do any good, it’s not even Peter anymore,” Derek says. “Now it’s my sisters and asking what I did to get you to do things for me, and—”

“Derek, just _go away_ ,” Scott snarls.

Behind him, the pit bull startles and then scuttles towards the back of the pen. Scott can’t see and the dog is very quiet about it, and as far as smell goes, Scott’s nose is probably too full of his own angry scent to register anyone else’s. Stiles has smelled that before, but an alpha werewolf is an alpha werewolf and even he tenses up.

Derek not only tenses, he takes a hasty step backwards. Scott immediately takes one forward and Derek fumbles into a second backwards step, blinking in surprise, and Scott paces them out two more feet so they’re in the hall and Derek is sort of plastered against the far wall.

“Look, you probably have reasons for doing this, but—but honestly, you could just handle things by telling people _no_. Or talking to your alpha, or just—just doing _anything_ but running me down to complain about the fact that you had _way_ too many beers and you weren’t just picking a fight with those two other werewolves, you were doing it with the _were-tiger_ who you nearly punched in the back when you missed that guy,” Scott snaps. “So I’m sorry if I didn’t want people ending up in the hospital, and since you were the one who was too drunk to walk home, I carried you. But just stop coming after me, would you? Because it’d all just stop if you didn’t and you just ignored me and went away.”

Scott jerks forward a little bit at the end. Not much, and Stiles doesn’t think it’s conscious. It’s probably just Scott doing his best to not shift in the middle of the shelter. But he does that, and Derek tips up his chin and drops his shoulders, and…Scott misses all of that because he pivots on his heel and stalks down the hall, hands balled up by his hips, hairline creeping irregularly down his nape and then pulling back up.

“So. Were-tiger,” Stiles says. “I wasn’t there, but he’s sort of pride-affiliated, so eventually I heard about it.”

“I don’t remember a were-tiger,” Derek says, blinking. For once there isn’t a speck of irritation in his face. He just looks genuinely confused.

“Trust me, he was there. I mean, even if phoenixes stop resurrecting whenever Scott lies, Boyd mentioned that he’d run into this asshole beta werewolf and I had to explain that actually, you’re just incredibly deficient in self-preservation, and he shrugged it off and just said you’d better not hit up that bar again,” Stiles says. “He’s actually a really chill dude. Boyd, I mean.”

“You,” Derek says, as his eyes very slowly focus on Stiles. So slowly, in fact, that Stiles sniffs discreetly, but nope, Derek doesn’t appear to be on anything. It’s just common shock. “I don’t. You.”

Stiles sighs while texting the shelter receptionist to see if Scott’s made it up there yet. She says no, so he tells her to stall Scott when he does get there. “Also, since you’re here, what is up with your uncle?”

“Why don’t you just ask him?” Derek says, inexplicably regaining his grasp of the English language.

Then he throws up his hands and walks off in the opposite direction as Scott went. That’s the direction of the operating room. There aren’t any surgeries scheduled today, but just to be on the safe side, Stiles finds another volunteer and sends her to boot Derek out the nearest exit. Then he finds Scott and points out that the shelter just got a new batch of puppies who need to be socialized and wasn’t Scott looking forward to the puppies? Puppies!

[No, it is not weird for werecats to play with cats, or werewolves to play with dogs. Weres are _people_ with extras, not actual human-animal hybrids. You know what’s weird? A cat-headed person who has a pet Persian cat and a world-dominating marketing empire that somehow, everyone just views as benign fun when really, Hello Kitty has already crushed you.]

Anyway. Stiles figures Scott needs some cool-down time and Derek needs to just not be there, and Stiles…Stiles desperately needs to investigate something. Namely, Peter’s apartment. Because seriously, he does not know what’s going on and he wants to know and also, he needs volume two already.

So Stiles goes over, figuring he’ll just do a quick book-swap and a riffle through Peter’s things to see what the man’s been up to, and he’ll be back in time to ride with Scott to their place for dinner. Except he gets there and…Peter has a sandbox.

Actually, Peter has a very nice penthouse condo with a small patio, and the patio has a sandbox. The box isn’t filled and is only recently assembled, going by the fact that its packaging is still leaning up against the wall. Four small pots filled with different grades of sand are sitting nearby, like Peter is testing them for…for…for something, which Stiles can’t figure out on the patio so Stiles goes back into the condo. And that’s when he notices that some of the furniture is different.

The bookcases have been extra-warded against claw damage. The sectional’s had a middle section and a couple ottomans added, so now it can be rearranged into a big, spacious…catbed, basically. And when Stiles checks around the bathroom and kitchen cabinets, he sees that not only has Peter restocked his lube—with two more edible flavors—but he’s also loaded up on werewolf energy drinks and _way_ more lint-rollers than just one were, however shaggy, is going to need.

Also, werewolf and werecat diets do overlap a lot, but not when it comes to seafood. Stiles wasn’t around long enough before to assess the food situation but he’s pretty sure Peter doesn’t normally have that much smoked fish. The liver…maybe Peter would have that around. And oh, hey, Peter’s a fan of the chicken-flavored hairball expectorant too, because that tube’s definitely half-empty.

“Derek, how many times do I have to—oh,” Peter says, walking in.

Stiles drops the tube and jumps to the top of Peter’s fridge and hisses. Peter promptly drops his bag and coat and holds up his hands, and once he gets over his shock, he gets very smug.

“Well, this is unexpected,” he says.

“Really?” Stiles says. “Really? Because the sand and the sandbox and the everything, you really want to play that card? And the stuff with Derek, come on, seriously.”

“Seriously,” Peter says. He pauses, glances around the room, and then stops on one of his bookcases. “Did you…oh, you did bring it back.”

Stiles snorts and hops down from the fridge and crosses the room—and right as Peter turns back and smirks, he swipes Peter’s bag off the floor and retreats with it to the couch. “Of course I did, I’m not a book-stealer, I’m just a stealth borrower and…and why do you have files from my dad in here?”

“Probably because I just concluded an agreement with him to extend the small-claims mediation pilot program my pack’s been spearheading to this town,” Peter says dryly.

Stiles looks at him, then at the files. Then Stiles takes out his phone. “Sure, right, and you managed to do all that right under the nose of our pride, because my dad would never just do that without discussing—”

“No, it was very aboveboard,” Peter says. “We had a full hearing and I made a presentation, and your pride asked some very intelligent questions, I have to say. I don’t usually walk out of there feeling like people honestly understand the program’s goals.”

“You,” Stiles says. Then he shakes himself and drops the files and retreats to the far end of the sectional so he can text like his thumbs are breaking.

About sixty texts later, he sits back and glares at Peter, who’s taken the opportunity to plop on the couch and straighten out his files. Because Peter isn’t lying, he did talk with Stiles’ dad and then with the rest of Stiles’ pride and Stiles skipped that one because when Lydia shot him the calendar invite, she just said it was an application for another community dispute-resolution measure and Stiles has about as much of that as he wants with being Scott’s best friend, and _also_ he was busy dealing with Scott and Derek—Derek. _Derek_.

He stops glaring at Peter and starts looking impressed, which oddly, makes Peter shift nervously. “You.” Stiles tosses his phone onto a nearby armchair and jabs his finger at Peter. “You. Oh, my God, you—you feinted with your angry nephew and then you pulled the nothing to see here, don’t look thing so I _looked_ and then you went and introduced yourself to my pride and they’re okay doing business with you so you’re practically pre-approved and—you’re _evil_.”

“I’m really very—” Peter says.

Stiles jumps him. Peter makes really funny noises when he’s being smushed into the couch, while being kissed and groped. He made the same noises the last time so Stiles just guesses that that’s his thing, and Stiles is okay with that. “Shut up, you outgamed me and that is _hot_ ,” Stiles pants, coming up for air. “That is disgustingly hot, my God, you’re a werewolf, you’re supposed to be all, wear you down with endurance, not going the left-handed backwards—”

“Gamed?” Peter gasps. Then he bucks a little bit, shifting his hips out of the pants Stiles is stripping off him. It might be because Stiles is laving his way up the side of Peter’s neck, purring insanely, and also rubbing his belly all across Peter’s half-mast cock.

“Well, yeah, obviously I was checking you out, well, okay, not obviously, I was hiding it but you’re supposed to be looking out for that and catching me at it,” Stiles mumbles, working back down Peter’s throat. “You know, see if you’re smart enough to, but whatever, counterstrikes are even better.”

Peter whines a little, shivering as his skin catches against Stiles’ teeth. His hands come up and start hauling at Stiles’ shirt, getting it mostly up Stiles’ back, and then he wraps his fingers in that and uses his grip to roll them over. He kind of gets Stiles by surprise and Stiles bites down and Peter does this whole, very sexy, whimper and shudder routine, going all floppy while his hand limply bats at his open bag because…because he’s just come home with another bottle of lube and it’s edible and flavored and Stiles stops biting Peter for a second because—

“Wait, did you co-opt my pride because you were also getting tips on me?” Stiles says.

It takes Peter a couple seconds to get enough breath back to answer. During which he still manages to slide his hands up and down Stiles, working them from the sides to the back where he starts knuckling into the base of Stiles’ spine, right where Stiles groans and purrs and humps the hell out of Peter’s leg.

“Well, not your—your father, obviously, that’s—early,” Peter grunts.

“Oh, my God, _hot_ ,” Stiles says, plowing their mouths back together.

Peter moans, and doesn’t stop moaning, all through Stiles licking down to his cock, and then past that to his hole, and what the hell, they’ve got the lube right there. And it’s good-quality, tasty stuff, but Stiles can’t just eat the whole tube out of Peter, he’ll cough up super-greasy hairballs, so…hey, he’ll finger Peter some to use it up. Which Peter’s good with, but then Peter pulls Stiles up by the shoulders and wraps his legs around Stiles and okay, Stiles can take a hint.

The new sectional definitely is better. Those extra ottomans give Peter something to sink his claws into while Stiles fucks him, and when Stiles’ tail pops out because hey, there is only so much control he can have when having his mind blown, there’s enough room that it doesn’t get kinked up against the couch back. Which might not seem like a big deal, but the last thing Stiles wants when slumping into a really pleasant, hazy post-coital snuggle is a twinge in his tail. 

Especially when man, but Peter just fits so nicely around him, and seems perfectly happy to stay that way. Usually it’s a minute or so, and then people start twitching or wiggling, but nope, Peter just lies there and purrs and purrs and when Stiles laps at his jaw, he crooks his head and nuzzles back and then goes back to purring.

“We’re dating,” Stiles says. He notices some fading scratches on Peter’s shoulders and licks at them till they completely disappear. “Right?”

“If we aren’t, I would appreciate some notice,” Peter mumbles sleepily, all half-lidded with a lazy smile on his face. “I only have another day to cancel my sand order.”

“What, you don’t want one of those Zen gardens right next to that super-deodorized mini-lawn you have out there?” Stiles says.

Peter makes a face. “The grass is for visitors,” he mutters. “I see no reason why I can’t use the toilet when I’m shifted. It’s not like the lever requires opposable thumbs.”

Stiles laughs and nuzzles Peter again, and he’s all ready to spend the whole afternoon snugged up to Peter’s ass when…“Peter, your door is open,” Derek says, walking in.

“Yeah, well, then why don’t you just shut it,” Stiles mutters, shoving his face into Peter’s back.

Derek makes inarticulate noises of horror. Peter shifts around a little bit, not trying to get out from under Stiles, and then sighs. “I know I should be glad that, in case I’m murdered in my home, you’ll actually check whether I’m all right,” he says to Derek. “But.”

“But—okay, whatever, you two just—whatever. I am so not getting into your messed-up…I just want to know how I can find Scott,” Derek says. “He’s not at the center, or at your place, and he’s not answering his phone.”

“That’s…probably because he doesn’t want to talk to you,” Stiles says into Peter’s back. “You know, because you’ve been a total dick to him.”

Derek’s noises turn frustrated, and then suddenly stop. He just breathes a few times. “Okay, yeah, I know. I want to tell him I’m sorry. But I can’t, because I can’t find him.”

“Fine, _I’ll_ tell him, please go away now,” Stiles mumbles.

“No,” Derek says, sounding more like his usual offended self. “No, I want to tell him—first of all, how do I know you’re actually going to say, Scott, Derek says he’s sorry, and not add on a whole bunch of your bullshit?”

Stiles drags his head off Peter, wipes some sweat off his face, and then looks over. “So that is actually a valid, smart question, and the answer is…there is no way you just suddenly realized you’re an asshole and decided to one-eighty and repent. So who’s making you do this? Peter?”

He looks at Peter, who shakes his head, with maybe a little, tiny purr in there because of how that shifts the way Stiles is tucked into him. “Ah, no, not my doing. Honestly, once I had my hearing with your pride, I stopped paying attention to what Derek was doing.”

“Nobody’s making me,” Derek says. “I just—okay, can you stop with the sarcastic tail thing? I’m serious here.”

“Sarcastic tail thing?” Peter murmurs, settling back into the couch.

They’re kind of sinking into the crack at the back of the cushions, so when Peter moves, he starts tilting them sideways. Stiles shrugs and goes with it, because hey, it’s not like it’s uncomfortable, and also, squeezing in between the cushions and back has the nice effect of holding him in Peter without him actually having to grab the man, which leaves his hands free to gesture irritably at Derek. And which also means that when he curls his tail down so it won’t offend Derek’s fragile sensibilities, it happens to brush up against certain sensitive parts of Peter’s.

Peter twitches, glances down, and then shivers and arches into it. “Oh, my God,” Derek says, staring at the ceiling. “Jesus. Just—I’m doing this all on my own, okay? I just—it’s just I thought this whole time that Scott was just making up the nice-guy act, and he was probably doing it because…”

“Because somebody was, what, blackmailing him into repeatedly going out of his way to fix your life?” Stiles says. “Um, alpha werewolf?”

“So?” Derek says. He starts to look down, he’s so annoyed, and then he grimaces and jerks his eyes back up. “Has Peter introduced you to my sister Laura yet? She’s an alpha too, but she still ends up doing what he says.”

“That is because you two are both completely incompetent at covering for yourselves,” Peter mutters. “And Cora—well, I think she just doesn’t have the attention span, but—”

“Whatever, that’s not the point,” Derek says. “The point is, how was I supposed to know he really meant it? He hangs out with you!”

Stiles pinches the bridge of his nose. Even Peter’s ass, plush outside and lovely tight inside that it has, is starting to give way against Derek’s sheer defensiveness. “Yeah, and believe me, if I were gonna make Scott do something, it’d be to stop wasting time on you and work with people who actually have something to offer in return. I mean, if I tell you where he is, what does that even do? So you’re gonna apologize, well, that’s nice but that doesn’t actually _return the favor_ , if you know what I mean.”

Derek breathes angrily at the ceiling for a couple seconds. His neck muscles bulge out and everything, and it’s kind of distracting until Peter stretches and the flex of his body drags Stiles’ eyes down to where Peter is casually scratching some half-dried come off his belly. Which is _so_ showy, and textbook jealous, and Stiles grins like he’s smoking whatever the cats up in Cheshire had.

“I’ll sign up for his mentoring program,” Derek mutters. “As—as a mentee. Okay? I’ll—I could—I think I could use some help. And he likes doing that kind of thing, doesn’t he?”

He sounds like each word is physically costing him in flesh and blood. Not that Stiles is really sympathetic or anything, considering he barely knows Derek and what he does know is that Derek is a dick, but…well, Stiles just had good sex and now he’s dating a guy who really knows how to catch his interest, and he’s feeling vaguely charitable.

“Fine, at least it’ll keep you at the center and out of my sandbox,” Stiles says. He flicks his tail-tip at Peter’s hand, then shifts it away as Peter tries to grab it. So instead Peter overextends himself and has to grab at the cushion instead, which pushes his ass back into Stiles, who is totally waiting for it and nudges back, cock stirring back to life inside of Peter, and—Stiles rolls his eyes at Derek’s disgusted noise and then ducks down to press his face into Peter’s nape. “God, go away, I’ll text you in a half-hour where to find him, okay? Busy now.”

“A half—” Derek starts.

Peter’s whole body ripples, not in a sex way but in a threatening-to-shift way, and then he lets out a low, guttural, very get-out-or-be-mauled snarl. “And shut the—”

Derek doesn’t shut the door.

Stiles sighs and twists around Peter to grab the remote from the coffee table, and then flings that. It hits the door and knocks it into the frame. There isn’t a click so Stiles doesn’t think the lock fully engages, but whatever, honestly, better things to pay attention to. Besides, Peter doesn’t seem that concerned about it.

[It is not true that if you throw a bit of string or a crumpled piece of paper past a werecat, they’re compelled to chase it. That is a total lie made up by people who really, really want to get slashed to death.

It is kind of true that werewolves like doggystyle, but it’s just one of many things they like. They also like licking, which is a good way to kill time in between rounds, and they’re pretty good on just rubbing up on each other, too. Hey, changing it up keeps things interesting. 

They’re both okay with that.]

* * *

Allison keeps nagging Chris about going down to the police station and clearing up the whole confusion about him being a hunter and a werecat. She’s nice about it, and she does have a point in that John will eventually figure it out, and it’ll be better coming from Chris than from, say, the federal licensing agency. Besides, she says, with a bland voice and a little glint in her eye, once it’s all cleared up, Chris and she can go check out this monthly pride get-together the sheriff keeps mentioning.

Chris personally thinks that his daughter’s energies are better spent on getting to know people her age than on trying to relaunch her middle-aged father’s love life, but…once they’re unpacked and Allison’s college transfer is complete, Chris really has no excuses for sitting in their house all day. So when his weekly session at the center is up, he drives over to the police station instead.

The cop working the front desk tells him that the sheriff has just stepped out to run a personal errand, but he’ll be back any second, so Chris is welcome to go wait in the sheriff’s office. If the man has any strong feelings about Chris’ hunting license, he hides it well; he’s so friendly he even goes so far as to get another cop to cover the desk while he shows Chris on back, and stops on the way so Chris can get a cup of water from the hall station.

Then he leaves Chris sitting there and goes back up front. Chris…manages to stay in his seat for about two minutes longer than he normally would, thanks to the breathing exercises that he’s just learned, and then he’s up and prowling around the office.

He does manage to keep himself from touching anything—that’s the main reason why he grabbed the water—but he can’t help but look at the framed certificates and sniff around the filing cabinets and squat down to investigate a flicker of movement just under John’s desk. That turns out to just be a fluffy dust bunny and Chris is stifling his sneeze into his shoulder when he hears John’s voice just outside the door.

“Yeah, I know, they’re looking into it. Melissa and Lydia are supposed to talk later,” John says to somebody who replies that that’s great, thanks. Then he says hi to somebody else, and then his footsteps come into the office.

They stop just inside the door. John breathes in, holds it, and then lets it out in an unusually long exhale that’s not quite annoyed enough to be a sigh. He starts to say something, stops and closes the door instead—Chris winces silently as the lock engages—and then takes another breath.

“Mr. Argent?” he says. He puts something down, some kind of bag, and then there’s the flutter of paper and a soft thud on the top of one of the filing cabinets. “Well, Jordan said you were just stopping by to introduce yourself around the station, and I appreciate that a lot, and…oh, hell with it, you know I know, right?”

“What?” Chris blurts out.

“Yeah,” John says, as his shoes come around the desk and then the rest of him appears, crouching down to peer past the office chair and under the desk. He pushes Chris’ dropped cup out of the way. “A little bit of your claw sheath stuck in the rail on top of my car, and also, I thought about the fact that a new werecat moved in town basically on the same day as you, and it’s not that big a town here, and…anyway. If this is about my getting in your face about you being a hunter, again, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Chris says, and then grimaces. If he had the space to do it, he’d put his hand over his face, but it’s pretty tight under John’s desk. “I mean, you said that already and that’s—that’s not why.”

John’s brows tick up briefly. “All right…if it’s about being a werecat, I just want you to know, nobody’s going to hold that against you. And if somebody so much as cracks a joke about it, just let me know and the pride will handle it.”

“Thanks,” Chris says.

He and John stare at each other some more. John looks mildly confused, but also like he’s perfectly willing to just keep squatting there and waiting for Chris to do…do…probably something besides test out the fact that as a werecat, he doesn’t have to blink nearly as often.

“It’s not—” Chris tries to gesture and forgets the tininess of the space and curses as he bangs his hand; John doesn’t so much as twitch a brow “—it’s—it’s just been a month, okay? And my family handles _werewolves_ , that’s what they had in medieval France and that’s what they have in backwoods Washington and anyway, that’s what our license covers and _I_ damn well follow federal law, whatever my crazy—”

“Were they rabid?” John says, sympathetic and low, right when Chris runs out of breath.

Chris nods and fiddles with a string coming off his coat-cuff and doesn’t look at John. “Yeah. Yeah, they went to ground in one of the local pack’s hunting blinds and the alpha asked me to help out, and I just—I tripped. Goddamn gopher hole.”

“So isn’t it really more like two weeks?” John says. “You have the shots and quarantine to go through.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did that at home.” Chris makes a face at his fingers. “My daughter’s fully-trained, she could—she came home from college to watch me, and anyway, we knew we’d have to move to somewhere with actual resources for werecats and might as well get started packing our stuff, and…this is just so goddamn stupid. Shit. I mean—I didn’t mean being a—”

“Yeah, yeah, no, I know what you mean. I wasn’t born, my wife turned me, and I still remember it was about two months before I could trust myself around a chipmunk,” John says, reaching for the office chair.

Chris hisses and John immediately stops. He cocks his head, then withdraws his head and slowly shifts back so that he’s on his hands and knees, looking in at Chris.

“Shit,” Chris mutters, flushing. “Shit. Sorry, I just—I don’t know, I just—you kind of…it’s nothing personal, I think…”

“Oh. Oh, okay.” John looks thoughtfully at Chris, like he might actually understand in spite of Chris’ incoherent babbling. Then he scoots back a few feet. He’s still too close for Chris to be coming out any time soon, but the wall’s keeping him from going any further. “Claudia used to tell me all the time to watch that…nobody’s really taken that over since she died, unfortunately.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Chris says under his breath. Not because he’s not sympathetic, because he really is, he just can’t make himself talk any louder than that without feeling like he needs to bolt, and damn it, he might be stuck under here but he will _not_ wreck the man’s desk.

Thankfully, John doesn’t take offense, just makes an absent acknowledging noise as he pulls off his shoes and socks. He shoves those to the side, then unbuckles his belt. He leans up and towards Chris for a second to set that on the desk and Chris is busy cringing at that, which is why it takes Chris too long to realize that the man is _stripping_.

“What are you doing?” Chris hisses.

“Huh?” John says. He’s twisted around so he has the room to pull off his pants and he doesn’t look back at Chris as he answers. “Just relaxing, why?”

“Why?” Chris repeats incredulously.

John shrugs, and off comes his shirt. He folds that up, humming tunelessly under his breath, and then shucks his underwear and there’s just all this muscle and the man has _no_ tan lines, he’s that golden all over, except for a little fading towards cream on his inner thighs and right around his groin and the whole goddamn time he’s just stretching and flicking lint off himself and acting like Chris isn’t even there.

Then he shifts, flopping down against the wall with his back legs lying along his tail and his belly pointed at Chris, fur there all ruffled and soft-looking. He tips his head back, yawning, pink tongue lapping out between impressive fangs, and then drops it onto his forepaws.

[Werewolves don’t differ that much. It’s pretty much the same model wherever you go, cosmetic things like fur color aside. Werecats, on the other hand, come in a lot of different versions and they still haven’t figured out the genetics of that for borns, let alone bittens like Chris. Although from what he’s seen, he thinks at least some of it has to do with some cosmic joker laughing their head off somewhere.

John looks like a goddamn prime male lion, right down to the honey-streaked mane. While the first time Chris saw what his full shift looked like, he embarrassed himself by asking his doctor whether he’d grow any once he was done with the rabies shots. Allison tries to make him feel better by printing out articles about the amazing leaping ability of the serval, but modern firearms can close that gap just as well, and at the end of the day Chris would rather not look like he’s anemic with satellite dishes for ears.

At least he just has the body type, and didn’t also get the damn spots.]

Chris stares at the man, but John just ignores him. Slits the eyes, shifts weight a little bit, tail occasionally flicking. Then even the tail stops moving as John basically turns into a giant, furry lump, which sort of melts at the edges as time goes on. 

“You have to be kidding me,” Chris mutters.

John’s ear swivels towards him and Chris goes still, but then it flicks back into a relaxed position. An odd guttural noise escapes from him. Then it comes again and…he is _snoring_. His whiskers are twitching with it, and his tail-tip kind of rises a little, then brushes around in the same rhythm.

That tail-tip is…it’s interesting, and Chris is cursing himself to hell and back, but he can’t help but get a closer look. The chair creaks as he elbows it out of the way and he has to freeze multiple times, but each time, John doesn’t even stutter his snores, so Chris keeps creeping out and he’s almost got the tail when—

So he screams. Well, only an idiot wouldn’t if a full-grown male lion jumped on them.

Except—it’s not a lion at that point. John shifted back mid-jump and now Chris is shoved under the man, his claws are jammed into John’s shoulder and arm, and he’s got his knees hiked up around the man and he’s just ruined his shoes because his hindclaws are in at least one of John’s shins, and—“What the hell are you doing?” Chris snaps.

“Got you out,” John says, grinning down at him.

Chris looks around. Yeah, okay. Then he looks back at John, and he’s about to tell the man exactly what he thinks about that bullshit when he realizes John’s bleeding. “Oh, _shit_ ,” Chris says, yanking all of his claws out of John.

John grunts a little bit, but doesn’t tense at all. “Don’t worry about it, it’ll heal and I got used to that raising my…” he pauses “…well, Stiles never did that, but good thing, that would’ve been awkward.”

“And it’s not right now,” Chris says, his face just about melting off, it’s so flaming. With John’s blood smeared all over his mouth because he’d panicked and licked John’s shoulder.

“Yeah, well, it’s your first month, you get some slack,” John says. He starts to move, then stops and looks at Chris again, and sure, now he looks embarrassed. “Look, er, Mr.—Mr. Argent, I’m not sure if Tracy at the center went over this with you yet, but we don’t function exactly like a lion pride and—”

“You’re naked and I just licked you, I think you can call me Chris,” Chris says, because his brain just has completely given up on his dignity.

John cocks his head, and that whisper of embarrassment goes as quickly as it came, to be replaced with a slow, but growing amusement and…and something that’s making Chris squirm a little bit where John’s thigh ended up pressing right on his groin. “Okay. Well. Call me John.”

“Great, hi,” Chris mutters. He keeps trying to not look at John, and John keeps bobbing back into view. “Not as if I haven’t embarrassed myself multiple times in front of you at this point, or anything.”

“Yeah, well, now that I think we’ve got it cleared up what that was about, I’m not going to hold it against you. I think you were doing pretty well, actually, considering the circumstances,” John says. He’s still grinning, and it is both annoying and—and it’s probably making Chris squirm more than that thigh against his twitching cock, which is a whole separate kind of annoying. “Anyway, you meet my son, you’ll get why pretty much nothing werecat fazes me.”

Chris nods absently and twists a little bit. He and John both hitch, and then he looks back up at John. His face still feels like it should be nothing but cinders, but…he’s still around, and he thinks that this whole mess may have finally reached the point where he can’t even register how ridiculous it is, and…well, somebody’s got to say it. “So, are you just going to lie there, or were you going to do something with that?”

“Well, you’re new at this, I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable,” John says. He means it, there’s enough firmness in his tone to show that, but he’s also got a very lazy, contemplative look in his eye.

The way his tail suddenly reappears behind him, curling in delight, is a dead giveaway too. “I’m new at being a _cat_ ,” Chris growls. “Not that—”

He lunges up and John damn well _purrs_ his way into making that a roll, getting them fully away from the desk and out towards the middle of the room. Chris does get the kiss, but it starts out an afterthought to the hand John shoves straight down the front of his pants and wraps around his cock. John’s fingers are wide and blunt and grip just tight enough, and by the time John shakes Chris off and snakes down there to actually get Chris’ clothes off, he’s got plenty of come to lick off.

Which he does, laving over Chris’ cock and groin and then up behind Chris’ balls till Chris thinks the man is dead set on scouring everything from there. Not just come, sweat and scent and Jesus, he jams his claws straight through the carpet into the underpinning concrete and for a second he thinks maybe his skin goes too, and honestly, he doesn’t mind. It feels so _good_.

But no, that’s not John’s goal. He demonstrates that by climbing over Chris again and snugging his cock right between the tops of Chris’ quivering thighs, his hands going to squeeze Chris’ legs around that and his cock head rubs right into Chris’ prostate and Chris mewls under him, rocking back into it. All that spit makes for _barely_ enough lubricant as John humps into Chris, teeth occasionally scratching at Chris’ nape, dragging Chris along a deepening furrow in the carpet, friction burn just adding a teetering almost-bad pain to it till Chris comes again, gets a little wetness to ease things.

And then John comes, paints up Chris’ thighs. He lies heavily on Chris for a few minutes, both of them wheezing for breath, and then he slides down again. Cleans Chris up till Chris loses his grip and accidentally lets his tail shift out and thumps John in the head with it. Chris hisses, but John just chuckles and nuzzles one of his buttocks, then rolls back up to curl around Chris.

“Is that your tail?” Chris mutters a few minutes later, into the side of John’s throat.

“Yeah, I like having it out afterward,” John says. “But if it’s bugging you, I can—”

“No, it’s fine, just…kind of thought the tail-twining was a folktale,” Chris says. He can feel John’s purr starting, way down in the man’s chest, before it even comes out the man’s mouth. “You have a hell of a privacy ward on this office. Nobody’s even knocked.”

John sighs. “Yeah, well, when you meet the rest of the pride, you’ll see why I need that.”

“My daughter was saying something about a get-together,” Chris says, reluctantly pushing his head up. “Do we need to bring anything for that? Is it potluck?”

“Well, you want to bring some food, you can, but we take care of that. You just should need an extra set of clothes,” John says. Then he cocks his head. “On the other hand, maybe just don’t bother dressing, throw on a robe or something like that. Save me the trouble of having to tidy up after.”

“You’re kind of an asshole,” Chris says. “You know, I thought that was the hunter license, but you are anyway, aren’t you?”

John shrugs. Chris elbows him, which makes John laugh and pull him down again, and Chris…holds out for maybe half a second before he starts purring. He’s still getting a handle on this and John went straight for nuzzling behind the ears and reaching around to rub under his chin, and—okay. So maybe he likes the asshole part of John, too.

[Weres don’t have heats except in pornos and outdated romance novels, but they do have increased stamina. And strength, and renewed flexibility, and a whole new set of hot-button areas.

So okay. Some of this, Chris really doesn’t mind.]

* * *

Derek doesn’t really believe that Stiles is going to help him out, but about an hour and a half later, Stiles breaks into Derek’s apartment and smacks Derek to the floor and then plops down on the kitchen table. “I didn’t break in,” he says, peering over the edge. “Peter has a key and he let me in, and you know, trying to rip off my head is not a good start to the new you.”

“I thought you were a burglar,” Derek grunts, pushing himself up on his elbows. He wipes at his jaw, sees blood on his fingers, and scoots backward—so he can get to his paper towels. Just that. “Wait. Peter? Peter’s—”

Stiles narrows his eyes. “Do you or do you not want to ever talk to Scott again?”

Derek considers his choices. Which…basically amount to Stiles, since all the people at the were-support center seem to have heard some screwed-up version of the fight and were acting like he’d gone and attacked Scott, and Derek doesn’t really know anything else about Scott.

“Fine,” Derek says.

“Great,” Stiles says, just before handing Derek a puppy. “Come on, he just peed in your bathtub so I figure we’ve got a window of twenty minutes, max, before he’s gotta go again.”

Then, it’s not entirely clear, Derek somehow ends up in front of the door to Stiles and Scott’s apartment. He still has the puppy, which is small and scruffy and staring suspiciously back at him. That last part might be because the puppy is missing part of its left ear and looks a little cockeyed as a result, but…on the other hand, it is clearly not wagging its tail about its situation.

“You might, you know, want to ring the doorbell. Or knock. Or try and kick the door in and then get fried by my awesome, awesome security wards,” comes drifting from the ceiling, or maybe the window at the end of the hall. Wherever Stiles is right now isn’t actually something Derek wants to know. “Something to let him know you’re actually here.”

“I think you made a bad decision to let that guy take you,” Derek mutters to the puppy, and then he takes a deep breath and knocks.

The door opens, Scott looks out, and then the door closes. Derek looks at the puppy, who still seems to be judging him, and then at the door. He presses his lips together, then gives it another, harder knock.

“Scott!” he calls when nothing happens. “Scott! Look, can we just—”

The door opens again. Scott is visibly straining to stay polite. “Derek, I’m not interested in fighting,” he says. “If it’s about Stiles and Peter, can you please just talk to them?”

“It’s not—” Derek gets out, and then the door shuts again.

“Honestly, I gave you a puppy with a disability, I can’t make this any easier unless I disabled _you_ ,” floats from Stiles’…area.

Derek looks at the puppy. The puppy flattens its ears. “You know he’s a cat, right?” Derek mutters.

The puppy sort of rears back in Derek’s arms, and then plants its paws on his chest and lets out two sharp barks. Of course, the door immediately opens to show a concerned Scott, who zeroes in on the puppy as it squirms free and leaps over into his arms. “Oh, hey, where did you…” Scott looks up and his encouraging smile fades as he sees Derek “…come from.”

“Stiles gave it to me,” Derek says, with a pointed look at the ceiling. But there’s nothing from that asshole, because why would Derek even think—Derek fights back an annoyed snarl and presses his hand to the side of his face. “He’s here, okay?”

“Yeah, I know,” Scott says, actually sounding sympathetic. But when Derek looks up again, he’s startled, and then he’s wary. “I…I don’t know what’s the matter this time, but when I said I didn’t want you to do things just because—”

“I’m not—Stiles isn’t—the puppy isn’t making me do it, all right?” Derek says. “I came because I wanted to say I was sorry. I thought you were being nice to me just because you had to, but I was wrong and—and you did actually help me.”

“A lot!” calls out Stiles’ muffled voice.

Scott sighs, steps back, and then looks at Derek. “Okay, come in,” he says, moving out of the way. “Stiles, you don’t need anything from in here, do you?”

“Aww, c’mon, Scotty, you’re not gonna shut the—”

So Derek walks in quickly because at least that way they won’t have the whole hall listening in, but he’s not actually expecting to get away from Stiles. When Scott immediately shuts the door behind him, he’s so surprised that he almost elbows the puppy in the head.

The puppy growls at him. Derek growls back, and then catches himself and winces and—just puts his face in his hand. “Look, I’m never going to win nice guy of the year, but I am really sorry,” he says. “I know it’s a big deal to help me out, and I guess that’s why I usually don’t think it’s real.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Scott says for some reason. “I don’t know who it was, or what they did that made you think that way, but they must have been huge assholes.”

“And this is why I think you can’t be really…really…this,” Derek says, gesturing between them. “This _nice_. You’re an alpha werewolf, and you hang out with werecats.”

Scott’s brows rise a little. “Well…depending on how you want to finish that thought, I can always let Stiles in and we can talk about that.”

“What? No, look, don’t do that, I’ll…I’ll…anyway, I’m sorry,” Derek says. He pauses, but when Scott doesn’t do anything, he figures he should probably leave. At least it looks like Scott believes him about the apology, and that’s about all he could reasonably expect. He’s not sure why he was hoping for more, anyway. 

Derek takes a step towards the door and the puppy barks. He glances back, but Scott is frowning down at the puppy, trying to look at its damaged ear. So Derek takes another step and the puppy barks again and then jumps down from Scott’s arms. It trots up to Derek’s leg and paws at his ankle, and then runs around to sit on Derek’s shoe.

“Are you kidding,” Derek says, looking down at it.

[Why would you think werewolves are automatically dog people? What, because of the canine connection? In nature, wolves and dogs fight like hell, and way, way more often than either do with big cats.

Which Stiles absolutely knows. God, he’s such an asshole.]

“I think he likes you,” Scott says. He smiles down at the puppy, but when he looks up at Derek, his smile stays in place, though it gets a little more tentative. “He might be used to you anyway. I don’t know if you’re doing anything, but it’d be helpful if you could stick around while I take him to the shelter, just so he can adjust to things.”

Derek opens his mouth, pauses, and then takes a deep breath. “Whatever, sure. I don’t have anything this afternoon.”

Scott beams at him. 

[See, unlike Peter, Derek can get a date without turning it into a twelve-step, five-year plan involving world domination.

Okay, so Derek mostly gets lucky. But still. It _works_.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With the Stiles/Peter plot line, I didn't want to do a standard courtship story and once I got into the cat/dog jokes, I started thinking about how you actually get a cat interested in something. Namely, either ignore them, or don't let them see/get into something.
> 
> Yes, wolves stalk prey like big cats, but they also rely heavily on simply following prey and never letting them sleep or properly eat or drink till they're simply too exhausted to fight back. It's a key difference between them and the big cats.
> 
> Servals actually are really awesome. They have amazing standing jump skills.


	4. Epilogue One: The Women

“Nah, Dad’ll start him off easy, so don’t worry about it,” Stiles says, walking Allison out to the back patio of the Stilinski house. “Anyway, the girls have been dying to meet you, so you’ll have plenty to do.”

The “girls” are lounging on lawn chairs around the patio, in stylish sundresses and big sunglasses despite it being almost sundown. They include the redhead and the blonde from the center—Lydia and Erica, Allison’s since learned, and there’s another blonde named Heather. None of them look old enough to be Mrs. McCall and Allison must be really obvious about counting heads because Lydia sets her tiki drink aside and sits up.

“Melissa got held up at the hospital, but she’ll be here later,” Lydia says crisply. She gives Stiles a nod, and then, when he grins at her, an impatient look. “Don’t you have a werewolf to plot trouble with?”

“Just wanted to make sure Allison got to you guys all right,” Stiles says. His grin widens and he gives Allison a pat on the shoulder, then twists fluidly around, bounds up onto the roof, and disappears.

“Showoff,” Erica mutters.

Allison knows the other woman’s checking her from behind those shades, but she just folds her arms over her chest and considers each of them in turn. “Well, Mr. Stilinski said that my dad and I were welcome to come, but he _also_ said that he had no idea how my dad’s clothes got ruined so I had to bring a change to the police station for him.”

Lydia smiles coolly, her eyes steady and unblinking. “Stiles’ dad is a highly intelligent man and a valued member of the pride, but he is, well, a he.”

“I thought the women were supposed to be the ones who ran things,” Allison says after a second.

“Because we do,” Lydia says, sitting up. “You really shouldn’t judge a pride by its males.”

“Though I’ll give you this, if you’ve been just watching Stiles and Scott these past couple weeks, I can’t really blame you for wondering what kind of morons we are,” Erica says. She takes off her shades and swings them from her hand, then points them at an empty chair across from Lydia and herself. “Stiles usually isn’t _that_ much of a sex-crazed airhead, but…anyway. So the cold shoulder at the center. That was before we did all our what’s the word—”

“Due diligence,” Lydia mutters, in a tone of long-standing exasperation.

Erica snickers and flaps the sunglasses at her without looking away from Allison. “Yeah, that. We didn’t know you were the side of the Argents who still _are_ sticking with female leadership.”

“And now that you do?” Allison says.

“Well, I guess that depends on you,” Erica says, leaning forward with a coy smile on her face. “You want to just mess around with the boys? Or—”

“Would you like to help rule the town?” Lydia finishes.

Allison can feel herself starting to smile, but she fights it for another second. “Just the town?”

“We’re all working on degrees, and there’s only so much you can do when you have morning chem lab,” Heather sighs.

Lydia just reaches under her chair and pulls up a laptop, which she opens and then flips around so that Allison can see the screen. And the several open windows it’s showing, including at least one topographical map of the town that appears to be showing magical hot spots. When Allison gets a little closer, she sees that another one is a spreadsheet listing town official job titles.

“Interested?” Lydia says, looking at Allison over the laptop.

“My dad’s always going to be top priority, just so you know,” Allison says, as she sits down and takes a glass of punch from Heather. “But other than that…go ahead, I’m listening.”


	5. Epilogue Two: Well, Scott and Allison were going to meet sooner or later

“That’s Scott,” Erica says. She waits for Allison to reply, and when she doesn’t get one, looks over. “ _Oh_. Oh, I see, so we should totally tell you about the group sex benefits?”

Allison makes an absent noise, eyes still fixed on where Scott is helping his new werewolf salvage case-slash-obvious romantic interest disassemble an elk. She doesn’t seem like she’s so dense she could miss the intense bedroom eyes that Derek is giving Scott. And then Derek reaches over and uses a splash of blood as an excuse to grope Scott’s bicep, and if that’s not a spike of interest in Allison’s scent, Erica isn’t a werecat.

“Okay, but fair warning, Scott’s kind of…well, I dunno, he might be your type,” Erica says. “Personally, much as I like the package, he’s just so nice about doing it.”

“Nice?” Allison echoes.

“Yeah…I don’t know, sex with him is a little…tedious,” Erica says.

“Excuse me?” Stiles says, popping up. “Are we talking shit about my bestie? And using SAT-level words into the bargain?”

Erica rolls her eyes and bats his head back. “Shut up, he is. Look, I appreciate a guy who doesn’t think ‘considerate’ and ‘female orgasm’ are dirty words, but I like my sex to _flow_ , you know what I mean? So all the constant stopping and asking if I’m good, if he’s licking a little too hard, if I want him to slow down—it’s not listening if I have to keep telling you the same thing, you know?”

“Well, on Scott’s behalf, excuse him if he’s the lone alpha werewolf, standing out there against a vast ocean of masculine oppress—” Stiles starts indignantly.

“The other guy looks like he might be able to help push Scott a little,” Allison says. She tilts her head as Derek progresses to flicking blood down his back and across his ass under the guise of scratching himself, and then shoulders Scott out of the way to bend over and dig into the elk, presenting all those blood splashes for Scott’s blinking, faintly poleaxed perusal. “Don’t you think?”

“I have actually not yet gotten to have an opinion on Derek,” Erica says, also reconsidering. “You know, whatever Lydia says, we’re not an all-work pride. We’re very, very much about the fun around here, too.”

[Stiles takes this opportunity to quietly slip away, grab Peter from where he’s chatting with Melissa—who, thankfully, is too worn out from a double shift to be prowling—and strongly suggest that they go back to Peter’s place. It’s not him being selfish so much as well, knowing what the girls are like and wanting to make sure what’s promising to be a good thing doesn’t end up in the hospital with severe exhaustion, barely out of their first week together. Even supernatural healing can only go so far.

Okay. It’s totally selfish. Whatever, he’s a good pride-mate most of the time, and he shows up one-ten percent for all of the serious business stuff.

Anyway, he’s a werecat. He doesn’t _need_ to make excuses, he just does.

And it is _awesome_.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story grew out of [this idea](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6059890/chapters/17307637), and my weakness for cat jokes.


End file.
